The University of Osaka · Social Sciences
Professor Shusaku Sasaki's research lab specializes in behavioral economics and experimental social science, focusing on how nudges and social information influence prosocial and health-related behaviors. The lab investigates the design and impact of message-based interventions—particularly in public health contexts such as vaccination, infection control, and charitable giving—using large-scale online experiments and field data. A central theme is understanding how psychological and social cues, such as peer behavior or donation matching, affect individual decision-making without compromising autonomy. The lab also explores the role of identity, social norms, and information framing in shaping real-world behaviors.
Figures are computed from collected data and may differ slightly.
Vaccination promotion is a crucial strategy to end the COVID-19 pandemic; however, individual autonomy should also be respected. This study aimed to discover other-regarding information nudges that can reinforce people's intention to receive the COVID-19 vaccine without impeding their autonomous decision-making. In March 2021, we conducted an online experiment with 1595 people living throughout Japan, and randomly assigned them either of one control group and three treatment groups that received
Nudge-based messages have been employed in various countries to encourage voluntary contact-avoidance and infection-prevention behaviors to control the spread of COVID-19. People have been repeatedly exposed to such messages; however, whether the messages keep exerting a significant impact over time remains unclear. From April to August 2020, we conducted a four-wave online survey experiment to examine how five types of nudge-based messages influence Japanese people's self-reported preventive be
To control and slow down the spread of COVID-19, policymakers and practitioners are employing messages with elements and wording based on nudges to encourage people fs voluntary behaviors of contact avoidance and infection prevention. However, although existing studies have found that nudge-based messages strengthen their intention to take the behaviors, it is not known whether the messages really promote their actual performance. In the end of April 2020, we conducted a survey experiment on a n
Abstract This study uses a Japanese nationwide sample and experimentally compares rebate and matching, both of which are schemes intended to lower the price of monetary donation. Standard economic theory predicts that the two schemes will have the same effect on individuals’ donation behavior when their donation price is equivalent. However, we conduct an incentivized economic experiment through the Internet on 2300 Japanese residents, and find that matching, which lowers the donation price by a
We use the data of 4,000 homogeneous donors on a fundraising website and uncover behavioral principles about when, where and how donations are influenced by others’ contributions. The uniqueness of this website is that fundraising pages show each amount of the previous individual donations in chronological order. In our noble empirical model, we construct variables to explain various patterns of social information that each donor is actually seeing. The main variables include each amount of the
We empirically investigated how voluntary helping behavior is influenced by the number of its potential recipients by using a nationwide survey in Japan (N = 1, 333) and examining the relationship between blood type and blood donation behavior. It is generally known in Japan that type O blood can be medically transfused to individuals of all blood groups; therefore, the potential transfusion recipients’ number of the type O blood is the largest among the four blood groups. Our empirical analysis
We measure differences between altruism toward a family member and toward an unknown foreigner using hypothetical questions in internet surveys across five countries: Germany, the US, Singapore, South Korea, and Japan. Our analysis shows that people in all five countries exhibit greater altruistic tendencies toward family members compared to their behavior toward foreigners. However, the degree of discrimination differs across countries. It is lowest in Germany and largest in Japan; the remainin
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