Nudging and COVID-19: how behavioral science can help enforce social distancing

The recession, the lockdown, and the frequent reports about the affected persons and the sanitary precautions have led to Corona fatigue. Consequently, people, getting used to the situation, are no longer worried about contracting the virus. According to the qualitative research results citizens do not respect nor understand social distancing. To help change this behavior, we designed four different variants of Social Distancing floor stickers in Arabic based on insights from behavioral science and the research findings. The randomized controlled experiment was conducted in Mseken, Sousse, one of the most affected cities in Tunisia, and led to an increase in the respect of social distancing regulations.