Hand-hygiene mitigation strategies against global disease spreading through the air transportation network

Christos Nicolaides; Demetris Avraam; Luis Cueto-Felgueroso; Marta C. González; Ruben Juanes

An important question is how such smart technologies are adopted by the general public, and what incentives can promote hand washing behavioral changes. Do digital nudges (motivation messages) make health related establishments attractive to individuals? A recent study has found that nudges have been effective at improving outcomes in a variety of health-care settings including a significant increase of influenza vaccination rates 20 . Can social influence or peer effects improve smart hand-washing engagement? Recent works have identified that social influence plays an important role in many behaviors like exercise or diet 51, 52 , and there is some initial evidence that it can play a role on individual hygiene 53 . There is certainly a need for rigorous and carefully designed field experiments on large population scale to identify and measure the causal effect of digital nudges, incentives and peer influence on public hand washing engagement of air travelers as well as the mechanisms of health-enhancing human behavior change.