The key to effective communication to promote people getting the COVID-19 vaccines may lie in behavioral economics and consumer behavior theory, experts say.

As the first doses of COVID-19 vaccines roll out, it is still unclear whether enough Americans will get the vaccine to allow the nation to return to normalcy.

Many believe a key part of the equation lies in how effective vaccine communication teams are at convincing the public to get vaccinated.

“The country has made an incredible investment in fast-tracking SARS-CoV-2 vaccines from conception to market, which would make it even more tragic if we fail to curtail the virus simply because Americans are hesitant to be vaccinated,” says Stacy Wood, professor of marketing, executive director of the Consumer Innovation Collaborative at North Carolina State Poole College of Management, and first author of a new paper in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Recent surveys indicate that the proportion of the US population willing to be vaccinated has fluctuated in recent months–from a high of 72% in May to 51% in September and increasing slightly to 60% in November.

Of those respondents who indicated that they probably or definitely would not get the vaccine, less than half said they might be open to vaccination once others start getting it and more information becomes available.

Since Anthony Fauci has said that at least 80% of the population will need to be vaccinated to get the country back to normalcy, Wood notes that this means it will be necessary to get 100% follow-through from those who are more likely to get the vaccine and 100% conversion of those who are unlikely now but willing to keep an open mind. That’s a daunting prospect.

To address this challenge, Wood and coauthor Kevin Schulman of Stanford University drew on their expertise in behavioral economics and consumer research to develop 12 strategies that could, collectively, create an effective vaccine-promotion effort.

Read the full article about COVID-19 vaccine by Matt Shipman at Futurity.