Working Paper: NBER ID: w30273
Authors: Susan Athey; Kristen Grabarz; Michael Luca; Nils C. Wernerfelt
Abstract: Public health organizations increasingly use social media advertising campaigns in pursuit of public health goals. In this paper, we evaluate the impact of about $40 million of social media advertisements that were run and experimentally tested on Facebook and Instagram, aimed at increasing COVID-19 vaccination rates in the first year of the vaccine roll-out. The 819 randomized experiments in our sample were run by 174 different public health organizations and collectively reached 2.1 billion individuals in 15 languages. We find that these campaigns are, on average, effective at influencing self-reported beliefs - shifting opinions close to 1% at baseline with a cost per influenced person of about $3.41. Combining this result with an estimate of the relationship between survey outcomes and vaccination rates derived from observational data yields an estimated cost per additional vaccination of about $5.68. 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.
Keywords: No keywords provided
JEL Codes: No JEL codes provided
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| Increase in positive beliefs about COVID-19 vaccines (I19) | Actual vaccination behavior (I12) |
| Increase in knowledge about how to obtain vaccines (I10) | Actual vaccination behavior (I12) |
| User survey responses (C83) | Actual vaccination rates (Y10) |
| Social media advertising campaigns (M37) | Increase in positive beliefs about COVID-19 vaccines (I19) |
| Social media advertising campaigns (M37) | Increase in knowledge about how to obtain vaccines (I10) |
| Social media advertising campaigns (M37) | User survey responses (C83) |