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Coronavirus Disease 2019
My Grudge Against the COVID Nudge
Why COVID rules should be made mandatory.
Posted July 28, 2020 Reviewed by Hara Estroff Marano
Quite differently from most other European countries, the UK COVID’s policy is characterized by the minimal use of mandatory restrictions and hardly any enforcement. One might be tempted to ask whether this policy is effective.
One useful thought experiment is to imagine the abolishing of all traffic and replacing them with voluntary guidelines with the help of some cool nudges (psychological manipulations) This would be done, for instance, by installing a sign on every traffic light, saying “Most people who arrive at this busy intersection do stop on the red light.”
If this imaginary scenario scares you, you should have similar feelings about an exit strategy that relies mostly on soft guidelines and hardly on any enforcement.
Why can’t we actually rely solely on nudges to get people to abide by traffic rules? One would think that the fear of losing one’s life in a car accident would suffice to get people to follow the rules and drive carefully. But, unfortunately, this is not the case. A car accident is an event too remote, fanciful, and of low probability to affect our decisions. The likelihood of a 100-pound fine by a cop standing around the corner, together with the feeling of shame when violating the law, is way more effective.
Some of my behavioral economics colleagues, including those at the Nudge unit that advises the Cabinet Office on a regular basis, propagate the use of primarily soft policies to deal with the corona crisis. A soft policy advisory is a wonderful deal for almost all parties involved. Governments love it because it allows them to avoid unpopular policies and to get it endorsed by experts. Academic advisers enjoy it because they can claim to have come down from their ivory tower into the realm of policy making and feel that they are being listened to. But too often there is one party that loses: the public!
Take the use of face masks as an example. In spite of the unequivocal recommendation of a study by a Royal Society group in favor of their use by the general public, the British government, who requested the study, decided not to mandate it. While masks are effective, they don’t really protect the persons who wear them but rather those with whom they come in contact. This dilutes the incentives to use them.
Mandating masks is, therefore, absolutely necessary, especially now, when the lockdown is gradually easing and millions of people who are “starving” for shopping, entertainment, and pubs will start pouring into narrow spaces. Masks are likely to be the only thing standing between them and the virus. The politics of categorizing masks as countereffective or even dangerous in spite of all the evidence is an excellent research topic for sociologists to investigate.
What sort of environments would allow nudging to replace stricter policies? While it’s hard to answer this question categorically I will try to address it with three rules of thumb, at least one of which needs to hold:
(1) When the alternative of mandatory rules is so repugnant that it makes many of us sick in terms of the violation of human rights.
(2) When the stakes are small.
(3) When the spillover effects are minor. That is to say, when the person’s decision has no major effect on the well-being of other people.
Using nudging as the sole tool to increase deceased organ donations is fine because the alternative of mandating it is repugnant. Nudging for the purpose of reducing electricity consumption is acceptable because the stakes are small. Nudging people to get tested for colon cancer is also fine. The stakes are high but there are no spillover effects.
COVID-19 nudging doesn’t satisfy any of these conditions. The stakes are huge, as are the spillover effects, and the alternative of mandatory restrictions is not really repugnant.
While behavioral tools such as nudging cannot by themselves maintain safety during the corona exit phase, they can increase compliance if added to mandatory restrictions. When asked by the governments that I advise about the one tool that would be most effective, I answer: transparency.
People have an innate mistrust of governments. This is a global phenomenon that harms incentives to follow rules even when they are made mandatory. This mistrust is fed by the understanding that governments and individuals have different objectives. Governments want to survive and get reelected, while we, individuals, want to survive and “re-enjoy” life. A clear exit strategy that explains the rationale behind every rule, presented in the form of a schedule that would only be amended if the epidemic changes course unexpectedly, will increase trust and, with it, compliance. It will also allow each of us to plan our own individual exit strategy to get our life back on track.
This piece appeared in "i-news" a leading newspaper in the UK.
