This single text made girls 45% more likely to get vaccinated

In this episode of the Nudge podcast, host Phill Agnew explores the endowment effect, the phenomenon where people value things more once they feel ownership of them. Agnew recounts his own experience of overbidding on a house due to this effect and cites a study on lottery tickets to illustrate the principle. He then interviews Giulia Tagliaferri and Niall Daly from the Behavioural Insights Team about their experiment in Georgia, where they used text messages to encourage HPV vaccination. The team found that messages framing the vaccine as "reserved for her" significantly increased vaccination rates. Agnew attempts to apply this "reserved for you" framing to his own online course by offering a discount to his newsletter subscribers, but the experiment fails, possibly because the offer lacked personalization, scarcity, and exclusivity. He concludes that while behavioral science offers valuable guidance, its application isn't guaranteed and requires careful consideration of context.