The Importance Of Social Norms Against Strategic Effects: The Case Of Covid-19 Vaccine Uptake

We study how individual decisions are affected by those of other members of the society. We use the vaccine against COVID-19 as a case study and empirically estimate the magnitude of three key forces: Herding, Social Norms, and Free-riding. We find that Free-riding is dominated by the other two forces, and that Social Norms are a key driver of behavior. There is, however, substantial heterogeneity and systematic differences between people by demographics and their political preferences. (C) 2021 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.