Abstract
Parental hesitancy poses a serious threat to the success of the COVID-19 childhood vaccination campaign. We investigate whether adults' opinions on childhood vaccination can be influenced via two survey experiments in Italy (n = 3,633 participants) and the UK (n = 3,314 participants). Respondents were randomly assigned to: a “risk treatment” that highlighted the potential risks of COVID-19 to a child, a “herd immunity treatment” that emphasized the community benefits of pediatric vaccination, or a control message. Participants’ probability of supporting COVID-19 childhood vaccination was then assessed on a 0–100 scale. We find that the “risk treatment” reduced the proportion of Italian parents strongly against vaccination by up to 29.6 %, while increasing the proportion of neutral parents by up to 45.0 %. The “herd immunity treatment”, instead, was only effective among non-parents, resulting in a lower proportion of individuals against pediatric vaccination and a higher proportion of individuals in favor (both shifted by around 20 %).
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 3683-3687 |
Number of pages | 5 |
Journal | Vaccine |
Volume | 41 |
Issue number | 25 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Jun 7 2023 |
Externally published | Yes |
Keywords
- COVID-19
- Children
- Health information
- Parents
- Vaccine hesitancy
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Molecular Medicine
- General Immunology and Microbiology
- General Veterinary
- Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health
- Infectious Diseases