Published in

National Academy of Sciences, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 5(119), 2022

DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2100719119

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Encouraging the resumption of economic activity after COVID-19: Evidence from a large scale-field experiment in China

This paper is made freely available by the publisher.
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.

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Abstract

Significance When the COVID-19 pandemic ends and it becomes safe to resume economic behavior, we will need to find effective ways of communicating that it is truly safe to do so. In this study, we tested a simple “nudge” that informed people of the proportion of their neighbors who were planning to visit a restaurant over the weekend, so that those who felt that restaurants were very unsafe would realize that many others felt comfortable visiting them. Our nudge successfully motivated such hesitant individuals to increase restaurant visits by 37%, and additional analyses indicate they indeed felt that visiting restaurants was safer.