Lessons for COVID-19 vaccination from eight federal government direct communication evaluations

We discuss eight randomized evaluations intended to increase vaccination uptake conducted by the US General Services Administration’s Office of Evaluation Sciences (OES). These evaluations had a median sample size of 55,000, deployed a variety of behaviorally-informed direct communications, and used administrative data to measure vaccination uptake. The confidence interval from an internal meta-analysis shows changes in vaccination rates ranging from -0.004 to 0.394 percentage points. Two studies yielded statistically significant increases, of 0.59 and 0.16 percentage points. The other six were not statistically significant, although the studies were powered to detect effect sizes in line with published research. This work highlights the likely effects of government communications and demonstrates the value of conducting rapid evaluations to support COVID-19 vaccination efforts

Passing the buck: Delegating choices to others to avoid responsibility and blame

Although people prize the ability to choose when making choices for themselves, this right may become a burden when tasked with choosing for others. We show that people are more likely to delegate choices for others than for themselves, especially choices with potentially negative consequences. This is driven by a desire to avoid feeling responsible or being blamed for such decisions rather than a desire to avoid making difficult choices or a lack of concern for others’ outcomes, and is unique to delegation and does not extend to other methods of choice avoidance, like delaying decisions or flipping a coin, that do not absolve decision makers of responsibility and blame. Moreover, people only delegate to others who can assume responsibility, regardless of their expertise, consistent with the notion that people delegate primarily to cede responsibility and blame, not put choices in the hands of more capable decision makers