What We Learned From the Philly Vax Sweepstakes

What impact did the Philly Vax Sweepstakes — a large-scale, high-payoff vaccine regret lottery program — have on Philadelphia’s COVID-19 vaccination rates?

The Philly Vax Sweepstakes was a vaccine incentive program launched in the summer of 2021 by the Center for Health Incentives & Behavioral Economics (CHIBE), Wharton’s Behavior Change for Good Initiative (BCFG), the City of Philadelphia, and the Black Doctors COVID-19 Consortium. Read CHIBE’s original story on the sweepstakes to learn more about the design of this program.

Wharton Doctoral Candidate Linnea Gandhi, the lead author on a recent SSRN pre-print on this topic, spoke with CHIBE about what we learned from the vaccine lottery sweepstakes in Philadelphia.

The authors on this SSRN pre-print were: Linnea Gandhi, Katherine L. Milkman, Sean Ellis, Heather Graci, Dena Gromet, Rayyan Mobarak, Alison Buttenheim, Angela Duckworth, Devin G. Pope, Ala Stanford, Richard H. Thaler, and Kevin Volpp.