Vaccine Incentives, From Donuts to Dollars

Uncanny Valley | WIRED

WIRED

Technology

4.1 • 572 Ratings

🗓️ 4 June 2021

⏱️ 34 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

So, you want to vaccinate your populace. Sometimes it's not enough to appeal to people's basic sense of self-preservation. You have to find other ways to entice them. Governments in states like Ohio, California, and West Virginia have announced plans to offer vaccine lotteries. The premise is simple: Get vaccinated, and you could win upwards of $1 million. Now, private companies are following suit, offering their own bonuses and sweepstakes to encourage customers to vaccinate—and to open up their wallets.

This week, we talk with WIRED senior correspondent Adam Rogers about the behavioral science of vaccine lotteries, and whether even slim odds at a big payout will encourage the holdouts.

Show Notes:

Read Adam’s story about how vaccine lotteries might actually work.

Recommendations:

Adam recommends the novel The Hidden Palace by Helene Wecker. Mike recommends El Pato sauce. (Also read an LA Eater story about it here.) Lauren recommends sour cream on eggs, and also the Patagonia Fleetwith Romper.

Adam Rogers can be found on Twitter @jetjocko. Lauren Goode is @LaurenGoode. Michael Calore is @snackfight. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab. The show is produced by Boone Ashworth (@booneashworth). Our theme music is by Solar Keys.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Mike.
0:01.3	Lauren.
0:02.2	Mike, if you happen to have been on the fence about getting a vaccine, what is the thing, what is the prize that would have pushed you to get one? I think maybe like a dozen donuts. That's it? Yeah, sure. I thought you were going to say a million bucks. Yeah, okay, yeah, a million bucks. All right. Well, I guess you're a simple guy. Donuts will do it for you. And it turns out, donuts might do it for a lot of people, which is what we're going to talk about today.
0:31.8	Hey, everyone. Welcome to Gadget Lab. I'm Lauren Good. I'm a senior writer at Wired.
0:38.4	And I'm Michael Collory. I'm a senior editor at Wired. Why does it say a been your beddeter at Byrd?
0:44.6	What is that? Did I miss the joke? No, that was me. Oh, okay. All right.
0:50.2	Moving on. For the second week in a row, that laughter you hear is from wired senior correspondent
0:55.3	adam rogers we had adam on last week to talk about his new book which is all about color
1:00.3	it's super cool it's super nerdy which is what we love here on gadget lab so i recommend that after
1:06.1	you listen to this pod you go listen to that one but we're very happy to have Adam back on this week to talk
1:11.5	about vaccine lotteries. Hey, Adam. Hello, I'm glad to be back. It's a lot of, a lot of us
1:16.1	seniors chatting about two weeks in a row, just seniors. Yeah, apparently I'm also a geriatric
1:22.5	millennial now, so that's really fun. Okay. So, Adam, you wrote a story about this on Wired.com this week.
1:30.2	It all started in Ohio where the governor announced that any resident who's got at least
1:35.1	one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine would automatically be entered into a lottery to win a million bucks.
1:41.5	And then other states followed suit, right?
1:43.5	California up to the ante.
1:44.9	It's $1.5 million where we all happen to be in California.
1:49.0	West Virginia is giving away money and trucks and guns, which is so West Virginia.
1:54.5	Now private companies like United Airlines and CVS are also getting into the game.
1:58.8	It's all an effort to entice more people to get vaccinated,
2:02.0	but our question is, is this going to work, right? Would a slight chance of winning a load of
	...

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