Encouraging the resumption of economic activity after COVID-19: Evidence from a large scale-field experiment in China.

ABSTRACT: As the COVID-19 pandemic comes to an end, governments find themselves facing a new challenge: motivating citizens to resume economic activity. What is an effective way to do so? We investigate this question using a field experiment in the city of Zhengzhou, China, immediately following the end of the city's COVID-19 lockdown. We assessed the effect of a descriptive norms intervention providing information about the proportion of participants' neighbors who have resumed economic activity. We find that informing individuals about their neighbors' plans to visit restaurants increases the fraction of participants visiting restaurants by 12 percentage points (37%), among those participants who underestimated the proportion of neighbors who resumed economic activity. Those who overestimated did

SUBMITTER: Palacios J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8812684 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature