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Abstract Understanding why animals (including humans) choose one thing over another is one of the key questions underlying the fields of behavioural ecology, behavioural economics and psychology. Most traditional studies of food choice in animals focus on simple, single‐attribute decision tasks. However, animals in the wild are often faced with multi‐attribute choice tasks where options in the choice set vary across multiple dimensions. Multi‐attribute decision‐making is particularly relevant for flower‐visiting insects faced with deciding between flowers that may differ in reward attributes such as sugar concentration, nectar volume and pollen composition as well as non‐rewarding attributes such as colour, symmetry and odour. How do flower‐visiting insects deal with complex multi‐attribute decision tasks?Here we review and synthesise research on the decision strategies used by flower‐visiting insects when making multi‐attribute decisions. In particular, we review how different types of foraging frameworks (classic optimal foraging theory, nutritional ecology, heuristics) conceptualise multi‐attribute choice and we discuss how phenomena such as innate preferences, flower constancy and context dependence influence our understanding of flower choice.We find that multi‐attribute decision‐making is a complex process that can be influenced by innate preferences, flower constancy, the composition of the choice set and economic reward value. We argue that to understand and predict flower choice in flower‐visiting insects, we need to move beyond simplified choice sets towards a view of multi‐attribute choice which integrates the role of non‐rewarding attributes and which includes flower constancy, innate preferences and context dependence. We further caution that behavioural experiments need to consider the possibility of context dependence in the design and interpretation of preference experiments.We conclude with a discussion of outstanding questions for future research. We also present a conceptual framework that incorporates the multiple dimensions of choice behaviour. 

Development of an effective COVID-19 vaccine is widely considered as one of the best paths to ending the current health crisis. While the ability to distribute a vaccine in the short-term remains uncertain, the availability of a vaccine alone will not be sufficient to stop disease spread. Instead, policy makers will need to overcome the additional hurdle of rapid widespread adoption. In a large-scale nationally representative survey ( N = 34,200), the current work identifies monetary risk preferences as a correlate of take-up of an anticipated COVID-19 vaccine. A complementary experiment ( N = 1,003) leverages this insight to create effective messaging encouraging vaccine take-up. Individual differences in risk preferences moderate responses to messaging that provides benchmarks for vaccine efficacy (by comparing it to the flu vaccine), while messaging that describes pro-social benefits of vaccination (specifically herd immunity) speeds vaccine take-up irrespective of risk preferences. Findings suggest that policy makers should consider risk preferences when targeting vaccine-related communications.