Attitudes on Voluntary and Mandatory Vaccination against COVID-19: Evidence from Germany

Daniel Graeber,Christoph Schmidt-Petri,Carsten Schroeder

doi:10.2139/ssrn.3717703

Abstract

We study the willingness to get vaccinated and the acceptance of a policy of mandatory vaccination against COVID-19 in June and July 2020 in Germany based on a representative real time survey, a random sub-sample (SOEP-CoV) of the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP). About 70 percent of adults in Germany would voluntarily get vaccinated against the corona virus if a vaccine without side effects was available. About half of residents of Germany are in favour, and half against, a policy of mandatory vaccination. The approval rate for mandatory vaccination is significantly higher among those who would get vaccinated voluntarily (around 60 percent) than among those who would not be vaccinated voluntarily (27 percent). The individual willingness to get vaccinated and acceptance of a policy of mandatory vaccination correlates systematically with sociodemographic and psychological characteristics of the respondents.

Highlights

Great efforts have been made worldwide to develop a vaccine against COVID-19
Passengers: interviewees who would not get vaccinated voluntarily but are in favor of mandatory vaccination. We refer to this group as ‘passengers’ because they apparently want to see the public good of herd immunity provided by mandatory vaccination, yet would not voluntarily contribute to this good
Our first main result is that a large majority of about 70 percent of adults in Germany would voluntarily get vaccinated against the novel coronavirus if a vaccine without side effects was available

Summary

Introduction

Great efforts have been made worldwide to develop a vaccine against COVID-19. When we first drafted this article, in October 2020, 35 different potential vaccines were in clinical trials and 145 were still in the pre-clinical stage. In February 2021, several vaccines have been approved in many countries and are being rolled out, 74 are in clinical trials, and 182 are in the pre-clinical stage [1]. Research institutes for research and teaching purposes. The direct use of SOEP data is subject to the provisions of German data protection law. Signing a data distribution contract is the single precondition for working with SOEP data. The data distribution contract can be requested with a form which can be downloaded from: http://www.diw.de/documents/ dokumentenarchiv/17/diw_01.c.88926.de/soep_ application_contract.pdf

Objectives

Results

Discussion

Conclusion