Novel Science Addresses Novel Virus

Applying behavioral strategies that utilize insights from psychology and behavioral economics while maintaining freedom of choice -otherwise known as ‘nudges’- have the potential to gently steer people towards greater adherence with COVID-19 lockdown measures. The overreliance on classical policy levers such as rewards and penalties has yielded suboptimal compliance rates because it assumes that people are rational. However, with limited success in enforcing lockdown measures, the pandemic has revealed deep behavioral roots underlying the lack of compliance which requires alternative policy tools. A regional study that looked at the policy responses of 13 Middle Eastern countries in order to assess the effectiveness of stringency measures in managing the spread of the virus found risk perceptions to play a central role in compliance. The study used the stringency index from the Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker, which is an aggregate of eight indicators on specific government responses, and the number of