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  • All HBS Web  (19)
    • News  (5)
    • Research  (11)
  • Faculty Publications  (8)

Show Results For

  • All HBS Web  (19)
    • News  (5)
    • Research  (11)
  • Faculty Publications  (8)
Page 1 of 19 Results
  • January 2022
  • Article

Rational Habit Formation: Experimental Evidence from Handwashing in India

By: Reshmaan Hussam, Atonu Rabbani, Giovanni Reggiani and Natalia Rigol
We test the predictions of the rational addiction model, reconceptualized as rational habit formation, in the context of handwashing in rural India. To track handwashing, we design soap dispensers with timed sensors. We test for rational habit formation by informing... View Details
Keywords: Handwashing; Habit; Monitoring; Behavior; Health; Motivation and Incentives
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Hussam, Reshmaan, Atonu Rabbani, Giovanni Reggiani, and Natalia Rigol. "Rational Habit Formation: Experimental Evidence from Handwashing in India." American Economic Journal: Applied Economics 14, no. 1 (January 2022): 1–41. (Lead Article.)
  • 12 May 2021
  • News

Small Bribes May Help People Build Healthy Handwashing Habits

  • 11 Oct 2017
  • News

Global Waters Radio: Nga Nguyen and Reshmaan Hussam on Incentivizing Handwashing Habit Formation

  • 09 Oct 2017
  • Working Paper Summaries

Habit Formation and Rational Addiction: A Field Experiment in Handwashing

Keywords: by Reshmaan Hussam, Atonu Rabbani, Giovanni Reggiani, and Natalia Rigol
  • 2023
  • Working Paper

Translating Information into Action: A Public Health Experiment in Bangladesh

By: Reshmaan Hussam, Kailash Pandey, Abu Shonchoy and Chikako Yamauchi
While models of technology adoption posit learning as the basis of behavior change, information campaigns in public health frequently fail to change behavior. We design an information campaign embedding hand-hygiene edutainment within popular dramas using mobile... View Details
Keywords: Handwashing; Public Health; Health; Information; Behavior; Change
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Hussam, Reshmaan, Kailash Pandey, Abu Shonchoy, and Chikako Yamauchi. "Translating Information into Action: A Public Health Experiment in Bangladesh." Working Paper, February 2023.
  • 2023
  • Working Paper

Behavioral Transmission: Evidence from a Public Health Campaign in Bangladesh

By: Reshmaan Hussam and Dayea Oh
We examine how behavior change transmits across contexts in the setting of hand hygiene in rural Bangladesh. We randomize an edutainment intervention across classrooms to trace schoolto-home transmission in handwashing behavior and randomize the proportion of students... View Details
Keywords: Handwashing; Interventions; Public Health; Health; Behavior; Change; Bangladesh
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Hussam, Reshmaan, and Dayea Oh. "Behavioral Transmission: Evidence from a Public Health Campaign in Bangladesh." Working Paper, April 2023.
  • 13 Oct 2011
  • News

Can The Private Sector Drive Meaningful Social Progress? The Case of Global Handwashing Day

    Rational Habit Formation

    Regular handwashing with soap is believed to have substantial impacts on child health in the developing world. Most handwashing campaigns have failed, however, to establish and maintain a regular practice of handwashing. Motivated by scholarship that suggests... View Details

    • 03 Jan 2022
    • News

    Making Healthy Practices Habitual

    • 2023
    • Article

    Conduit Incentives: Eliciting Cooperation from Workers Outside of Managers' Control

    By: Susanna Gallani
    Can managers use monetary incentives to elicit cooperation from workers they cannot reward for their efforts? I study “conduit incentives,” an innovative incentive design, whereby managers influence bonus-ineligible workers’ effort by offering bonus-eligible employees... View Details
    Keywords: Organizational Behavior Modification; Peer Monitoring; Persistence Of Performance Improvements; Crowding Out; Implicit Incentives; Compensation; Healthcare; Social Pressure; Image Motivation; Incentives; Motivation; Performance; Behavior; Motivation and Incentives; Compensation and Benefits; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Organizational Culture; Health Industry; California
    Citation
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    Gallani, Susanna. "Conduit Incentives: Eliciting Cooperation from Workers Outside of Managers' Control." Accounting Review 93, no. 3 (2023): 1–28.
    • May 2014 (Revised March 2017)
    • Case

    Unilever's Lifebuoy in India: Implementing the Sustainability Plan

    By: Christopher A. Bartlett

    Unilever's new Global Brand VP must not only revitalize Lifebuoy soap's sagging market performance, but simultaneously impact the health of one billion people worldwide. The latter challenge comes from Unilever's new CEO who has introduced the Unilever Sustainable... View Details

    Keywords: Multinational Management; Corporate Social Responsibility; Strategy Implementation; Marketing Strategy; Mission And Purpose; Change Management; International Business; Global; Fast-moving Consumer Goods; Soap; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Health Care and Treatment; Environmental Sustainability; Global Strategy; Developing Countries and Economies; Beauty and Cosmetics Industry; Health Industry; India
    Citation
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    Bartlett, Christopher A. "Unilever's Lifebuoy in India: Implementing the Sustainability Plan." Harvard Business School Case 914-417, May 2014. (Revised March 2017.)

      Uncovering the Mitigating Psychological Response to Monitoring Technologies

      Organizational psychologists have long held that monitoring workers saps them of their autonomy and thereby reduces their effectiveness. Yet technology has intensified such surveillance in recent years: Managers now track everything from clinicians’ handwashing to... View Details

      • Web

      Reconceiving Products & Markets - Institute For Strategy And Competitiveness

      William Lever in 1894 to combat cholera in Victorian England, today Lifebuoy is the world’s #1 selling germ protection soap—a win-win for Unilever and global health. The affordable soap’s unique formulation helps fight disease in the developing world. Lifebuoy's View Details
      • 24 Jan 2018
      • Research & Ideas

      How to Get People Addicted to a Good Habit

      soap before meals can dramatically reduce rates of both diarrhea and acute respiratory infections. To that end, major health organizations have poured a lot of money into handwashing education campaigns in the developing world, but to... View Details
      Keywords: by Carmen Nobel
      • 19 Dec 2018
      • Sharpening Your Skills

      New Year, New Habits

      bad behavior causes memories of those acts to gradually become less clear—a phenomenon they call “unethical amnesia.” Research Papers Habit Formation and Rational Addiction: A Field Experiment in Handwashing This study in rural West... View Details
      Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne
      • 03 Oct 2017
      • First Look

      First Look at Research and Ideas, October 3, 2017

      Handwashing By: Hussam, Reshmaan, Atonu Rabbani, Giovanni Reggiani, and Natalia Rigol Abstract—Regular handwashing with soap is believed to have substantial impacts on child health in the developing world.... View Details
      Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne
      • 01 Dec 2019
      • News

      Making Eco Easy

      formulated, concentrated products that consumers reconstitute with water in Blueland’s reusable acrylic spray bottles—tinted pink for bathroom cleaning, yellow for multisurface, and blue for glass or mirrors. The company also recently introduced a foaming View Details
      Keywords: Jennifer Gillespie
      • 22 May 2020
      • In Practice

      Post-COVID Health Care: More Screens, Less Red Tape?

      behavior change. This might be because you need to engage in the desired behavior many times before it sticks as habit. With COVID-19, we’re going through an extended period of heightened adherence to healthy hygiene behaviors such as frequent View Details
      Keywords: by Danielle Kost
      • 1
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