Highlight personal health benefits of COVID-19 vaccination, experts say

“Our results suggest that several forms of public messaging may increase vaccination intentions, but messages that emphasize personal health benefits had the greatest impact,” says UW Ph.D. student Madison Ashworth, principal author of an article which appears today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The new research is the latest in a series of coronavirus studies by UW College of Business economists Ashworth, Linda Thunstrom, Todd Cherry, Stephen Newbold and David Finnoff.

Researchers were among the first to identify vaccine reluctance as a potential stumbling block in efforts to end the COVID-19 pandemic, and vaccine reluctance has been found to be widespread. Recent surveys suggest that 60 to 70% of American adults intend to be vaccinated against COVID-19, which is below the threshold identified by public health experts for obtaining herd immunity.

To examine the impact on vaccination intentions of a variety of public health messages, the researchers interviewed a representative sample of 3,048 adults in the United States. Economists compared three messages describing the benefits of taking the vaccine: personal health benefits; health benefits for family, friends and community members; and the benefits to local and national economies – as well as a fourth message that emphasized the rigor and safety protocols of the vaccine development process. They also looked at the effect of combining multiple messages.

The private health benefits message increased scheduled immunizations by 16 percentage points, significantly more than the other messages.

“The strong response to the private benefit message may in part reflect the political polarization of vaccine reluctance in the United States,” the researchers wrote. “The conservatives are more hesitant and have a particularly individualistic view of the world. They might therefore be particularly sensitive to information that emphasizes private benefits. Our data supports this idea: the effect of the private benefit message on vaccination intentions is more important for conservatives. only for moderates or liberals.

The increase in vaccine intentions was greater for a group that received only the private benefit message than for a group that received all three messages, economists note.

“This suggests that there is no benefit in communicating several different types of benefits, potentially due to information overload,” they wrote.

The researchers also say that the source of information is also important and that reliable sources may vary from one subgroup to another. For example, previous research shows that messages promoting social distancing are more effective from a family doctor than from a governor or ordinary citizen.

The new study shows that people with low trust in government agencies are 14 percentage points less likely to want a vaccine, compared to those with medium trust. Of those who don’t want to be vaccinated, 90% are worried about side effects and how new the vaccine is, and 75% don’t trust vaccine developers and the Food and Drug Administration to honestly disclose the risks and the efficacy of a vaccine.

“Our vaccine safety message has done little to overcome the lack of confidence in the vaccine,” Ashworth said.

While their results show that messages about the private benefits of COVID-19 vaccination are the most effective, economists suggest more research to explore the effectiveness of different information channels for vaccine promotion.

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