Do Optimists Like Vaccines? The Effect of Perceived Vaccine Novelty and Beliefs in the World's Positivity and Orderliness on the Attitudes toward COVID-19 Vaccinations-The Case of European Young Adults.

Wojciech Trzebiński,Jerzy Trzebiński

doi:10.3390/vaccines10030379

Wojciech Trzebiński, Jerzy Trzebiński

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/vaccines10030379

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Abstract

The public debate over COVID-19 vaccinations tends to focus on vaccine-related arguments, such as their effectiveness and safety. However, the characteristics of a person’s worldview, such as beliefs about the world’s positivity and orderliness, may also shape attitudes toward COVID-19 vaccinations. These relationships were investigated using schema incongruity theory. The degree of the vaccine’s incongruence with the world’s order schema existing in people’s minds was represented by perceived vaccine novelty. Accordingly, the results of an online survey among European young adults (N = 435) indicate that perceived vaccine novelty negatively affects behavioral outcomes (vaccination intent, willingness to pay for vaccinations, and vaccination advocacy). Moreover, there occurred a negative interaction effect of positivity and orderliness beliefs on behavioral outcomes. Specifically, an effect of positivity was more positive when people perceived the world as less ordered. Furthermore, this interaction effect was more negative when perceived vaccine novelty was higher. A mediating role of perceived vaccine effectiveness was demonstrated for the above relationships. The results extend the existing literature on people’s worldviews into the domain of vaccine attitudes, and provide new insights on the role of perceived vaccine novelty. For vaccination policymakers and marketers, the paper suggests how to promote vaccinations with consideration of orderliness/positivity beliefs and vaccine novelty perception.

Highlights

As vaccines and the process of vaccination may be treated as products, especially when paid for, public support for them can be viewed from a consumer behavior perspective.Favorable consumer attitudes toward vaccines take various forms: (a) the perception that vaccines are effective and safe [1,2], (b) intention to vaccinate [3], (c) willingness to pay for vaccinations [4], and (d) vaccination advocacy [5].Despite the important role vaccinations may play in combating epidemics, vaccines remain controversial, pressing health policymakers and marketers to improve the effectiveness of vaccine advertising
Previous research provides indirect suggestions about the negative influence of perceived vaccine novelty on vaccination intent [21–24], the underlying psychological mechanism remains unexplored. It is unknown how beliefs about orderliness and positivity and vaccine novelty shape related vaccine attitudes, such as perceived vaccine effectiveness, willingness to pay for vaccinations, and vaccination advocacy
The mechanism proposed in our previous paper [16] needs to be further examined, the negative interaction effect of these two beliefs on various forms of vaccine attitudes, such as perceived vaccine effectiveness, willingness to pay for vaccinations, and vaccination advocacy

Summary

Introduction

Despite the important role vaccinations may play in combating epidemics, vaccines remain controversial, pressing health policymakers and marketers to improve the effectiveness of vaccine advertising. Less than 67% of EU/EEA citizens were fully vaccinated against COVID-19 (with two doses) at the beginning of December 2021 [6], nearly one year after those vaccinations were made available. Besides direct arguments about vaccines, such as vaccine effectiveness or safety, that prevail in social media discussions [9] and people’s declarations [10], attitudes toward vaccination may be shaped by people’s worldviews [11–16]. Considering such worldviews in vaccination advertising may enable marketers and policymakers to promote vaccines, at least partially bypassing the dispute over vaccines themselves

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