Nudging to handwash during the pandemic – The use of visual priming and salience

Abstract

The government has been asserting efforts to control the pandemic's infection rate by influencing people to comply with the health protocols. While these efforts aim to change people's behavior, behavior approaches like nudge are under-utilized, which thus motivates this paper. Nudge is the form of persuasion where a simple and subtle trigger is applied to encourage expected behavior. We conducted two studies to identify the right visual cues that best increase handwashing behavior. In Study 1 (online), we created some posters with varying concepts and held an online survey with 1,648 participants. Exploiting a pre-post design, we found that visual handwashing with foam and rhyming messages in the poster can lead to higher handwashing intention. In Study 2 (offline), we introduced four treatment types and observed the handwashing behavior of government officials and visitors using a hidden camera. With a total of 2062 people observed during the experiment, we found that while the treatment of procuring a proper facility did not yield a significant change in handwashing rate, our nudge treatment with the salient poster and salient footprints towards the sink increased the handwashing rate.