Evaluating the Efficacy of Covid-19 Intervention in Pakistan

Since the last two decades, public policy around the world, specifically in first-world countries has been guided by behavioral insights to nudge people to increase the efficacy of government interventions and policies. In this context, this study analyzes the effectiveness of government interventions and policies regarding the COVID-19 pandemic by finding if any of these were behaviorally informed and whether any behavioral insights were considered. For this purpose, focus group discussions, and episodic and semi-structured interviews were conducted with the representatives of government institutions, medical experts, and recovered patients of COVID-19. Consequently, the results depicted that only interventions and policies regarding precautionary measures, risk communication, and vaccination were behaviorally informed while none of the behavioral insights were intentionally taken into consideration but some aspects of progressive, regressive, educative, and architectural behavioral insights were identified in the COVID-19 interventions of government and the educative one performed most effectively. Moreover, emotional nudges and national and group reinforcement bias were also identified in the government interventions. Based on the results, this study emphasizes the need for the government to develop its behavioral insight team to conduct surveys and experimental-based studies to develop its behavioral insights based on its regional environmental characteristics.