COVID-19 and Behavioral Economics: Certain Aspects of the Causes of Irrational Behaviour During a Pandemic

Abstract

The aim of this article is to reveal the main reasons for the irrational behaviour of economic agents during the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic in terms of behavioural economics and opportunities for change such a behaviour.The article reveals the approaches that were used in 2020 and continue to be used today as the main ones to prevent the spread of coronavirus infection. Despite the existence of such prescriptions, the infection continues to spread and causes negative socio-economic consequences.Thus, the main reasons, the resistance of citizens to the measures recommended by governments around the world and the manifestation of deviant behaviour among the seemingly “rational” economic agents were analyzed.The main reasons and possible factors for changing such a behaviour are the postulates of behavioural economics, such as the effect of reinforcement effect, conservative bias, confirmation bias, conditional cooperation, the preference of beliefs consonance.In addition, this paper provides a brief overview of some post-material values of Ukrainian society based on global research and offers an assessment of the dependence of these values on the incidence of COVID-19 and an explanation in terms of behavioural economics.The article notes that the presence of certain established views on the “normality” of preventive antivirus measures may affect the propensity or the lack of propensity to adhere to the necessary protective behaviour by economic agents.The research methods are descriptive, analytical, methods of synthesis and comparison. As a result of the analysis, the article proposes a comprehensive approach to men’s behaviour during the pandemic according to behavioural economics.The study concludes that the main task to improve the effectiveness of preventive measures for the spread of COVID-19 today is to understand the causes of irrational behaviour in new circumstances in terms of behavioural economics and apply the theory of “pushing” or “nudging” to form positive social economic change. It is suggested to use this paper for further and deeper practical research of certain aspects of changing people`s behaviour for better work effectiveness and wellbeing.\nJEL classіfіcatіon: D03, A13