Leah R. Rosenzweig

“Influence of authority figures in COVID-19 vaccine acceptance in Kenya” WITH K. CARNEY, M. KREMER, E. Maffioli & W. Wong. in progress

Expectations of being judged by authority figures can motivate people to act in socially desirable ways. Healthcare professionals have been found to be some of the most trusted figures during the COVID-19 pandemic (Solís Arce et al. 2021), but how best to use their influence to encourage policy compliance and increase vaccination rates is less understood. In collaboration with the Kenyan government, we randomize whether households are visited by a nurse at home and whether this visit is unannounced or announced in advance. By comparing differences in vaccination rates across treatment conditions, we are able to estimate the social cost of declining vaccination face-to-face to a nurse and calculate the cost effectiveness of different vaccination policies. This randomized field experiment offers insights into the effectiveness of door-to-door campaigns as a mode of vaccine delivery, and offers valuable policy lessons for future pandemics.

“Testing personalized online messaging interventions to increase COVID-19 vaccine acceptance in Kenya and Nigeria” With M. Offer-Westort. [policy brief, virtual panel]

During mass vaccination campaigns, social media platforms can facilitate dissemination of public health information, but they may also spur vaccine hesitancy through the spread of false or misleading information. Messaging delivered by public health professionals may more appropriately address individuals’ concerns, but one-on-one conversations with a health provider are hard to scale.  Automated, personalized messaging can both appropriately address individuals’ concerns, and scale at a low cost. We design and deploy a Facebook Messenger chatbot to test messages targeting sources of COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy among 22,000 social media users in Kenya and Nigeria. After optimizing messaging using an adaptive experimental design, we compare the interactive concern-addressing chatbot to a chatbot that delivers a non-interactive public service announcement (PSA), as well as to a control, no information, condition. We find that the concern-addressing chatbot increases COVID-19 vaccine willingness and intentions by 4% in Nigeria and 5% in Kenya compared to the control condition, and by 4% in Nigeria and 3% in Kenya compared to the PSA intervention. Policymakers may want to consider using such personalized automated messaging platforms to increase policy compliance.

“If we move, it moves with us:” Physical distancing in africa during covid-19 World Development (2021). With C. Bicalho & M. Platas. [Appendix, Data, Tumbl] WAshington POst

Until a vaccine is widely available, physical distancing is central to curbing the spread of the novel coronavirus. In this paper, we use an online survey of respondents in Kenya, Nigeria, and Uganda conducted in April 2020 to understand knowledge, beliefs, and behavior related to physical distancing. We find that, while there is widespread knowledge that physical distancing reduces the spread of the virus, respondents underestimate their peers’ support for policies designed to enforce physical distancing, expect others not to practice physical distancing, and do not maintain physical distance themselves. However, more than half of respondents wrote a message to encourage others to practice physical distancing. Findings from survey experiments suggest that making salient the social and material costs for not keeping physical distance are insufficient to encourage compliance. Given the gap between individual’s own attitudes and expectations of others’ attitudes toward lockdown policies, we suggest that providing information on the extent of public support for physical distancing, in citizens’ own words, could be useful in encouraging compliance.

Sierra Leone With L. Tsai

With the Institute for Governance Reform (IGR) and Sierra Leone’s Directorate of Science, Technology and Innovation (DSTI) we created a nationally representative panel of citizens who were first surveyed April 11-18 [Wave 1 report] to help inform the government’s lockdown and aid distribution decisions.

Here is a Science Magazine article about our work.

Uganda with C. Bosancianu, A Garcia-Hernandez, M. Humphreys, P. Kiwanuka-Mukiibi, M. Platas, & L. Tsai

The Covid-19 pandemic has already disrupted community life and will likely have lasting effects on social and political dynamics. This project aims to identify and track over time citizens’ information about the virus, their compliance with Covid-19 mitigation policies, and local community norms of behavior using repeated phone surveys of a representative sample in Kampala, Uganda.

Data dashboard is available here!

Nigeria with J. Phillips, M. Platas, L. Tsai

With the Nigeria Center for Disease Control and Innovations Poverty Action (IPA) Nigeria we conducted a phone survey of citizens in Lagos State to understand their information about Coronavirus, attitudes toward the government’s response and willingness to comply with government policies.