Abstract
In order to control the spread of infectious diseases such as COVID-19, it will be important to develop a communication strategy to counteract “vaccine resistance”, that is, the refusal to take the COVID-19 vaccine even when available. This paper reports the results of a survey experiment testing the impacts of several types of message content: the safety and efficacy of the vaccine itself, the likelihood that others will take the vaccine, and the possible role of politics in driving resistance to the vaccine. In an original survey of 1,123 American M-Turk respondents conducted in the summer of 2020, we provided six different information conditions suggesting the safety and efficacy of the vaccine, the lack of safety/efficacy of the vaccine, the suggestion that most others would take the vaccine, the suggestion that most others would not take the vaccine, the suggestion that the vaccine is being promoted by liberals to gain greater control over individual freedom, and the suggestion that its approval is being by President Trump rushed for political motivations. We compared the responses for those in the treatment groups with a control group who received no additional information. In comparison to the control group, those who received information about the safety/efficacy of the vaccine were more likely to report that they would take the vaccine, those who received information that others were reluctant to take the vaccine were more likely to report that they themselves would not take it, and those who received information about political influences on vaccine development expressed resistance to taking it. Communication of effective messages about the vaccine will be essential for public health agencies that seek to promote vaccine uptake.
Highlights
Vaccination programs have reduced the toll of infectious diseases by preventing infection or reducing the severity of symptoms, contributing to higher standards of public health by lowering morbidity and mortality rates (Andre et al, 2008)
The case study we examine here is the situation in the summer of 2020 surrounding beliefs about a vaccine for COVID-19 that had not yet been approved, but the implications are transferrable to the acceptance of vaccines developed in the future as well
We implemented a survey-experiment in August 2020 in which we randomly assigned 1,123 respondents, recruited from Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk), to one of six experimental conditions that varied emphasis frames about a COVID-19 vaccine or to a control condition
Summary
Vaccination programs have reduced the toll of infectious diseases by preventing infection or reducing the severity of symptoms, contributing to higher standards of public health by lowering morbidity and mortality rates (Andre et al, 2008). Vaccination programs are effective in providing herd immunity only when they are accepted by large segments of the population. COVID-19 Vaccine Resistance that they preferred to wait until others have been vaccinated before making a personal decision on the matter (Simonson et al, 2021). In the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020–2, as in future outbreaks of vaccine-preventable illness, it will be important to combat this resistance/hesitancy and to promote vaccine uptake through effective communication strategies (Nyhan et al, 2014; French et al, 2020)
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