IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/wbk/wbrwps/9755.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Mass Messaging and Health Risk Reduction : Evidence from COVID-19 Text Messages in Tajikistan

Author

Listed:
  • Seitz,William Hutchins

Abstract

Can mass public health messages change behavior during a crisis? This paper assesses the impact of a COVID-19 focused text-messaging campaign launched in May 2020 with the Ministry of Health and Social Protection of Tajikistan to encourage compliance with risk reduction measures. The initiative sent a series of informational messages to about 5.5 million mobile phone subscribers and reached at least one member of more than 90 percent of the country’s households. An individual fixed effects estimator is used to measure changes in reported behavior after a respondent lists text messages as a primary source of information about COVID-19, or alternatively when reporting an official text message in the past week. Listing text messaging as a primary source of information increased the number of reported behaviors by 0.15 units (p = 0.000) and receiving an official text message in the past week increased the number by 0.47 units (p = 0.000). These effects were driven by more positive responses for wearing masks, reducing visits with friends and relatives, reducing travel, practicing safer greetings (such as fewer handshakes), and safety-related changes at work. The results suggest that text messaging–based public health messaging was a cost-effective means of increasing awareness in a large and geographically dispersed audience during the COVID-19 pandemic and that the program led to an increase in self-reported risk reducing behaviors.

Suggested Citation

  • Seitz,William Hutchins, 2021. "Mass Messaging and Health Risk Reduction : Evidence from COVID-19 Text Messages in Tajikistan," Policy Research Working Paper Series 9755, The World Bank.
    • Handle: RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:9755
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/424981629731059341/pdf/Mass-Messaging-and-Health-Risk-Reduction-Evidence-from-COVID-19-Text-Messages-in-Tajikistan.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Falco, Paolo & Zaccagni, Sarah, 2020. "Promoting social distancing in a pandemic: Beyond the good intentions," OSF Preprints a2nys, Center for Open Science.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Bahety, Girija & Bauhoff, Sebastian & Patel, Dev & Potter, James, 2021. "Texts don’t nudge: An adaptive trial to prevent the spread of COVID-19 in India," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 153(C).
    2. Campos-Mercade, Pol & Meier, Armando N. & Schneider, Florian H. & Wengström, Erik, 2021. "Prosociality predicts health behaviors during the COVID-19 pandemic," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 195(C).
    3. Valerio Capraro & Hélène Barcelo, 2020. "The effect of messaging and gender on intentions to wear a face covering to slow down COVID-19 transmission," Journal of Behavioral Economics for Policy, Society for the Advancement of Behavioral Economics (SABE), vol. 4(S2), pages 45-55, December.
    4. Abel, Martin & Byker, Tanya & Carpenter, Jeffrey, 2021. "Socially optimal mistakes? debiasing COVID-19 mortality risk perceptions and prosocial behavior," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 183(C), pages 456-480.
    5. Shusaku Sasaki & Hirofumi Kurokawa & Fumio Ohtake, 2020. "Short-term responses to nudge-based messages for preventing the spread of COVID-19 infection: Intention, behavior, and life satisfaction," Discussion Papers in Economics and Business 20-11, Osaka University, Graduate School of Economics.
    6. repec:cup:judgdm:v:15:y:2020:i:6:p:1037-1043 is not listed on IDEAS
    7. Daisuke Moriwaki & Soichiro Harada & Jiyan Schneider & Takahiro Hoshino, 2020. "Nudging Preventive Behaviors in COVID-19 Crisis: A Large Scale RCT using Smartphone Advertising," Keio-IES Discussion Paper Series 2020-021, Institute for Economics Studies, Keio University.
    8. Qi Guo & Palizhati Muhetaer & Ping Hu, 2023. "Cultural worldviews and support for governmental management of COVID-19," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 10(1), pages 1-16, December.
    9. Ennio Bilancini & Leonardo Boncinelli & Valerio Capraro & Roberto Di Paolo, 2020. "The effect of norm-based messages on reading and understanding COVID-19 pandemic response governmental rules," Journal of Behavioral Economics for Policy, Society for the Advancement of Behavioral Economics (SABE), vol. 4(S), pages 45-55, June.
    10. Duquette, Nicolas, 2020. "Heard immunity: effective persuasion for a future COVID-19 vaccine," SocArXiv jwvsp, Center for Open Science.
    11. Sachin Banker & Joowon Park, 2020. "Evaluating prosocial COVID-19 messaging frames: Evidence from a field study on Facebook," Judgment and Decision Making, Society for Judgment and Decision Making, vol. 15(6), pages 1037-1043, November.
    12. Shusaku Sasaki & Hirofumi Kurokawa & Fumio Ohtake, 2021. "Effective but fragile? Responses to repeated nudge-based messages for preventing the spread of COVID-19 infection," The Japanese Economic Review, Springer, vol. 72(3), pages 371-408, July.
    13. Gutierrez, Emilio & Rubli, Adrian & Tavares, Tiago, 2022. "Information and behavioral responses during a pandemic: Evidence from delays in Covid-19 death reports," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 154(C).
    14. Masayuki SATO & Shin KINOSHITA & Takanori IDA, 2022. "Subjective Risk Valuation and Behavioral Change : Evidence from COVID-19 in the U.K. and Japan," Discussion papers e-22-011, Graduate School of Economics , Kyoto University.
    15. Paolo Nicola Barbieri & Beatrice Bonini, 2021. "Political orientation and adherence to social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic in Italy," Economia Politica: Journal of Analytical and Institutional Economics, Springer;Fondazione Edison, vol. 38(2), pages 483-504, July.
    16. Fumio Ohtake, 2022. "Can nudges save lives?," The Japanese Economic Review, Springer, vol. 73(2), pages 245-268, April.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Health Care Services Industry; Telecommunications Infrastructure; Public Health Promotion; ICT Applications;
    All these keywords.

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:9755. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Roula I. Yazigi (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dvewbus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.