The Importance of Social Norms Against Strategic Effects: The Case of Covid-19 Vaccine Uptake

Overview

Journal Econ Lett

Date 2021 Jul 7

PMID 34230727

Citations 36

Authors

Marina Agranov

Matt Elliott

Pietro Ortoleva

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

We study how individual decisions are affected by those of other members of the society. We use the vaccine against COVID-19 as a case study and empirically estimate the magnitude of three key forces: Herding, Social Norms, and Free-riding. We find that Free-riding is dominated by the other two forces, and that Social Norms are a key driver of behavior. There is, however, substantial heterogeneity and systematic differences between people by demographics and their political preferences.

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