Suspended in 2025/26
PB452      Half Unit
Behavioural Science for Health and Crises Responses

This information is for the 2025/26 session.

Course Convenor

Availability

Requisites

Mutually exclusive courses:

This course cannot be taken with PB4D4 at any time on the same degree programme.

Using the global response to the Covid-19 pandemic as a starting point, the course aims at introducing students to state-of-the-art applications of behavioural science to health policy, practice, economics, and management. The course is designed to enhance students’ abilities to apply, in a critical and rigorous way, behavioural insights, tools, and interventions to concrete health, public health, and healthcare challenges such as: health emergency management and preparedness (preparedness and responses to future pandemics and health emergencies; building societal resilience); prevention of infectious diseases and vaccination; public health (diet and nutrition; physical exercise; alcohol abuse; tobacco and drug use; prevention and screening); clinical care (medication adherence; compliance; end-of-life decisions); mental health and wellbeing; healthcare professionals’ decisions and behaviours (including doctor-patient interaction and shared decision-making); blood and organ donations.

The course hosts specialist lectures by PBS faculty members and visiting fellows who will apply research-led teaching to address the different perspectives and challenges in this area.

10 hours of seminars and 10 hours of lectures in the Winter Term.

Students will be expected to work in small groups to produce a presentation in the WT, in which they will discuss a health-related area where principles, measures, and insights of behavioural science have been applied - or where they could be potentially applied in the future.

Attema A, Galizzi MM, Gross M, Karay Y, L’Haridon O, Hennig-Schmidt H & Wiesen D (2023). The formation of physician altruism. Journal of Health Economics, 87, 102716.

Bohm R, Betsch C, Korn L (2016). Selfish rational non-vaccination: experimental evidence from an interactive vaccination game, Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 131, 183-195.

Bunten, A., Porter, L., Sanders, J. G., Sallis, A., Payne Riches, S., Van Schaik, P., ... & Forwood, S. (2021). A randomised experiment of health, cost and social norm message frames to encourage acceptance of swaps in a simulation online supermarket. PloS one, 16(2), e0246455.

Bryan CJ, Tipton E, Yeager DS (2021). Behavioural science is unlikely to change the world without a heterogeneity revolution. Nature Human Behaviour, 5, 980-989.

Campos-Mercade P, Meier AN, Schneider FH, Meier S, Pope D & Wengstrom E (2021). Monetary Incentives increase COVID-19 vaccinations. Science, 374(6569), 879-882.

Charness G, Gneezy U (2009) Incentives to exercise. Econometrica, 77(3), 909-931.

Costa-Font J & Galizzi MM (2024): Behavioural Economics and Policy for Pandemics: Behavioural Insights from Responses to COVID-19. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9781009438469.

Dai H, Saccardo S, Han MA, Roh L, Raja N, Vangala S et al. (2021). Behavioural nudges increase COVID-19 vaccinations. Nature, 597, 404-409.

Dolan P, Galizzi MM (2015) Like ripples on a pond: behavioural spillovers and their consequences for research and policy. Journal of Economic Psychology, 47, 1-16.

Euser, S., van Dijk, M., Dekker, R., de Bruin, M., Mehra, S., Sanders, J., & Kroese, F. (2024). A behavioural perspective on pandemic preparedness. European Journal of Public Health, 34(Supplement_3), ckae144-738.

Galizzi MM (2014). What is really behavioural in behavioural health policy? And, does it work? Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy, 36(1), 25-60.

Galizzi MM, Ghislandi S (2020). Bergamo’s response to the coronavirus pandemic. Cambridge Core blog: https://www.cambridge.org/core/blog/2020/04/18/bergamos-response-to-the-coronavirus-pandemic/

Galizzi MM, Guenther B, Quinlan M, Sanders J (2020). Risk in the time of Covid-19: what do we know and not know? Economics Observatory: https://www.coronavirusandtheeconomy.com/question/risk-time-covid-19-what-do-we-know-and-not-know

Galizzi MM, Lau KW, Miraldo M & Hauck K (2022). Bandwagoning, free-riding and heterogeneity in influenza vaccine decisions: an online experiment. Health Economics, 31(4), 614-646.

Galizzi MM, Wiesen D (2018). Behavioural Experiments in Health Economics. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Economics and Finance. Oxford University Press: https://oxfordre.com/economics/economics/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780190625979.001.0001/acrefore-9780190625979-e-244

Guenther B, Galizzi MM, Sanders JG (2021). Heterogeneity in risk-taking during the COVID-19 pandemic: evidence from the UK lockdown. Frontiers in Psychology, 64:3653.

Guenther B, Galizzi MM & Sanders J (2024). PDOSPERT: a new scale to predict domain-specific risk taking behaviours in times of a pandemic. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 37(4), e2413.

Hallsworth, M., Chadborn, T., Sallis, A., Sanders, M., Berry, D., Greaves, F., ... & Davies, S. C. (2016). Provision of social norm feedback to high prescribers of antibiotics in general practice: a pragmatic national randomised controlled trial. The Lancet, 387(10029), 1743-1752.

Hanoch Y, Barnes AJ, Rice T (2017). Behavioral Economics and Healthy Behaviors. Routledge.

Hodges J, Stoyanova L & Galizzi MM (2023). End-of-life preferences: a randomised trial of framing comfort care as refusal of treatment in the context of COVID-19. Medical Decision Making 43(6), 631-641. 

Jarke H, Ruggeri K, Graeber J, Tunte MR, Ojinaga-Alfageme O, Verra S, Petrova D, Benzerga A, Zupan Z, & Galizzi MM (2022). Health behavior and decision-making in healthcare. In Psychology and Behavioral Economics: Applications for Public Policy (Kai Ruggeri, Ed.), Routledge, Oxon, UK.

Keijsers, J., Euser, S., Kroese, F., Sanders, J.G., Spruijt, P., Zantinge, E., ... & de Bruin, M. (2022). Behaviour as key to the pandemic Lessons learned, initial insights. National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM) of the Netherlands,  RIVM Open Repository: https://www.rivm.nl/en/documenten/behaviour-as-key-to-pandemic-lessons-learned-initial-insights

Kolner, C., van der Borg, W., Sanders, J., Keijsers, J., Joosten, M., & de Bruin, M. (2022). Public health measures during the COVID-19 pandemic through the lens of community organisations and networks in the Netherlands (2020–2021): five lessons for pandemic decision-making. Eurosurveillance, 27(42), 2200242.

Kourtidis P, Fasolo B, Galizzi MM (2024). Encouraging vaccination against COVID-19 has no compensatory spillover effects. Behavioural Public Policy, 8(4), 652-669.

Leurs, M., Sanders, J., Costongs, C., Maassen, A., & Sutton, G. (2022). What was the role of public health agencies in gathering behavioural insights during the COVID-19 pandemic?  WHO European Health Observatory;  https://eurohealthobservatory.who.int/monitors/hsrm/analyses/hsrm/what-was-the-role-of-public-health-agencies-in-gathering-behavioural-insights-during-the-covid-19-pandemic

Loewenstein G (1996). Out of control: visceral influences on behaviour. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 65(3), 272-292.

Loewenstein G (2005). Projection bias in medical decision making, Medical Decision Making, 25(1), 96-106.

Lunn PD, Belton CA, Lavin C, McGowan FP, Timmons S, & Robertson DA (2020). Using Behavioral Science to help fight the Coronavirus. Journal of Behavioral Public Administration, 3(1).

Milkman, K.L., Beshears, J., Choi, J.J., Laibson, D., Madrian, B.C. (2011). Using implementation intentions prompts to enhance influenza vaccination rates. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 108, 10415-10420.

Milkman, K.L., et al. (2021). A megastudy of text-based nudges encouraging patients to get vaccinated at an upcoming doctor’s appointment. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 118(20) e2101165118.

Roberto CA, Kawachi I (2016). Behavioral Economics and Public Health. Oxford University Press.

Ruggeri K, Stock F, Haslam SA, Capraro V, Boggio P, Ellemers N,..., Galizzi MM, Milkman KL, Petrovic M, Van Bavel JJ & Willer R (2024). A synthesis of evidence for policy from behavioural science during COVID-19. Nature, 625, 134-147.

Sanders, J. G., Spruijt, P., van Dijk, M., Elberse, J., Lambooij, M. S., Kroese, F. M., & de Bruin, M. (2021). Understanding a national increase in COVID-19 vaccination intention, the Netherlands, November 2020–March 2021. Eurosurveillance, 26(36), 2100792.

Sanders, J. G., Tosi, A., Obradovic, S., Miligi, I., & Delaney, L. (2021). Lessons from the UK's lockdown: discourse on behavioural science in times of Covid-19. Frontiers in Psychology, 12, 647348.

Schwartz JA, Chapman GB (1999). Are more options always better? The attraction effect in physicians' decisions about medications. Medical Decision Making, 19, 315-323.

Steinert JI, Sternberg H, Prince H, Fasolo B, Galizzi MM, Buthe T & Veltri GA (2022). COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy in eight European countries: prevalence, determinants and heterogeneity. Science Advances.

Thomas R, Galizzi MM, Moorhouse L, Nyamukapa C & Hallett TB (2024). Do risk, time, and prosocial preferences predict risky sexual behaviour of youths in a low-income, high-risk setting? Journal of Health Economics, 93, 102845.

Van Bavel JJ, Baicker K, Boggio PS, Capraro V, Cichocka A, Cikara M, Crockett MJ, Crum AJ, Douglas KM, Druckman JN, Drury J, Dube O, Ellemers N, Finkel EJ, Fowler JH, Gelfand M, Han S, Halsam SA, Jetten J, … & Willer R (2020).Using social and behavioural science to support COVID-19 pandemic response. Nature Human Behaviour, 1-12.

Volpp K, Loewenstein G et al. (2008). Financial incentive-based approaches to weight loss. Journal of the American Medical Association, 300, 2631-2637.

World Health Organization. (2023). European regional action framework for behavioural and cultural insights for health, 2022–2027. World Health Organization Regional Office for Europe.

Essay (100%, 3000 words)