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Title: The Role of Risk Preferences in Responses to Messaging About COVID-19 Vaccine Take-Up
Development of an effective COVID-19 vaccine is widely considered as one of the best paths to ending the current health crisis. While the ability to distribute a vaccine in the short-term remains uncertain, the availability of a vaccine alone will not be sufficient to stop disease spread. Instead, policy makers will need to overcome the additional hurdle of rapid widespread adoption. In a large-scale nationally representative survey ( N = 34,200), the current work identifies monetary risk preferences as a correlate of take-up of an anticipated COVID-19 vaccine. A complementary experiment ( N = 1,003) leverages this insight to create effective messaging encouraging vaccine take-up. Individual differences in risk preferences moderate responses to messaging that provides benchmarks for vaccine efficacy (by comparing it to the flu vaccine), while messaging that describes pro-social benefits of vaccination (specifically herd immunity) speeds vaccine take-up irrespective of risk preferences. Findings suggest that policy makers should consider risk preferences when targeting vaccine-related communications.  more » « less
Award ID(s):
1846764
PAR ID:
10250921
Author(s) / Creator(s):
; ;
Date Published:
Journal Name:
Social Psychological and Personality Science
ISSN:
1948-5506
Page Range / eLocation ID:
194855062199962
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
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