Non-integrated Costs Increase Effectiveness of Incentives

Carnegie Mellon University12,531 enrolled

Overview

The investigators will test the hypothesis that the control (no incentive) condition will have the lowest vaccination rate, the main task condition will have a significantly higher vaccination rate while the indirect condition will have the highest vaccination rate. Participants will be randomly assigned to one of the three message conditions and their vaccination records obtained from the university Occupational Health Department.

The investigators will send e-mails to a complete mailing list of faculty and staff at a university. Each recipient will be randomly assigned to one of three conditions: control, main task incentive or indirect incentive. Our main dependent variable will be whether or not participants decide to get vaccinated. The investigators will obtain their actual vaccination records from the university Occupational Health Department. Within the e-mail message, participants will indicate whether or not they intend to get vaccinated. Intention serves as an indirect dependent outcome. Upon clicking to indicate their intention, participants are redirected to a page which gives further instructions on how to proceed. Participants who vaccinate will be asked to complete a brief follow-up questionnaire to evaluate their experience with vaccination and (for those offered and incentive) to provide contact information to receive their payment.

Study Type

INTERVENTIONAL

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

PREVENTION

Masking

SINGLE

Enrollment

12,531

Conditions

Control - No Incentive for Flu Vaccine Direct Incentive Indirect Incentive

Interventions

Email MessageBEHAVIORAL

Participants will randomly receive an e-mail message about the availability of free flu vaccines.

Incentive for VaccinationBEHAVIORAL

$5 gift card offered for vaccination

Incentive for completing a short surveyBEHAVIORAL

$5 gift card offered for completing s short survey after one gets vaccinated

Eligibility

Sex: ALLMin age: 18 YearsMax age: 100 YearsHealthy volunteers:

Medical Language ↔ Plain English

Inclusion Criteria: * Must be faculty or staff at Rutgers University. Exclusion Criteria: \-

Locations (1)

Rutgers University

New Brunswick, New Jersey, United States

Outcomes

Primary Outcomes

Number of people vaccinated

Measure the number of people who got vaccinated in the Fall 2017 semester at a large state university. We will collect vaccination records from the university Occupational Health Department

Time frame: Up to 5 months

Secondary Outcomes

Intention to get vaccinated

Participants will receive an e-mail with our main treatment manipulations. In each e-mail they will be able to indicate whether or not they want to get vaccinated. We will use this measure as a second dependent variable.

Time frame: Up to 5 months

Data from ClinicalTrials.gov

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