Tackling health misinformation in humanitarian settings using behavioral science

This is a playbook on 6 curated behavioural insights to help understand how people form the beliefs that guide their behaviour.

From:
Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office
Published
30 May 2023
Country:
Congo (Democratic Republic)
Document Type:
Tool kit
Theme:
Health
Authors:
Busara Center for Behavioral Economics

Abstract

This playbook is a guide on 6 curated behavioural insights to help you better understand how people form the beliefs that guide their behaviour. Whether or not someone believes a piece of information depends:

  1. How they feel when they receive a piece of information (feelings)

  2. Whether they trust the source of information (trust in source)

  3. How often they have heard the information before (mere exposure effect)

  4. The information which comes to mind quickly and easily for them (availability bias)

  5. Whether the information supports their existing beliefs (confirmation bias)

  6. What others around them believe (social norms).

This guide unpacks behavioural insights that influence how individuals perceive, retain, use and act on information. Its goal is to provide operationally-relevant information to humanitarian actors on how to design information campaigns that lead to better health outcomes.

This research was supported by the Research for Health in Humanitarian Crises (R2HC) Programme.

Citation

Busara Nudging knowledge. ‘Tackling health misinformation in humanitarian settings using behavioural science’. Nairobi: Busara, 2023

Tackling health misinformation in humanitarian settings using behavioral science

Updates to this page

Published 30 May 2023
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