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The Effectiveness of Digital Interventions on COVID-19 Attitudes and Beliefs

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  • Susan Athey
  • Kristen Grabarz
  • Michael Luca
  • Nils Wernerfelt

Abstract

During the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, a common strategy for public health organizations around the world has been to launch interventions via advertising campaigns on social media. Despite this ubiquity, little has been known about their average effectiveness. We conduct a large-scale program evaluation of campaigns from 174 public health organizations on Facebook and Instagram that collectively reached 2.1 billion individuals and cost around \$40 million. We report the results of 819 randomized experiments that measured the impact of these campaigns across standardized, survey-based outcomes. We find on average these campaigns are effective at influencing self-reported beliefs, shifting opinions close to 1% at baseline with a cost per influenced person of about \$3.41. There is further evidence that campaigns are especially effective at influencing users' knowledge of how to get vaccines. Our results represent, to the best of our knowledge, the largest set of online public health interventions analyzed to date.

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  • Susan Athey & Kristen Grabarz & Michael Luca & Nils Wernerfelt, 2022. "The Effectiveness of Digital Interventions on COVID-19 Attitudes and Beliefs," Papers 2206.10214, arXiv.org.
    • Handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2206.10214
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    Cited by:

    1. Jose Maria Barrero & Nicholas Bloom & Steven J. Davis, 2023. "Long Social Distancing," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 41(S1), pages 129-172.
    2. Matilde Giaccherini & Joanna Kopinska & Gabriele Rovigatti, 2022. "Vax Populi: The Social Costs of Online Vaccine Skepticism," CESifo Working Paper Series 10184, CESifo.
    3. He, Daixin & Lu, Fangwen & Yang, Jianan, 2023. "Impact of self- or social-regarding health messages: Experimental evidence based on antibiotics purchases," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 163(C).

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