1. Personal risk or societal benefit? Investigating adults' support for COVID-19 childhood vaccination.
- Author
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Chiavenna, Chiara, Leone, Laura P., Melegaro, Alessia, Rotesi, Tiziano, Bokemper, Scott E., Paintsil, Elliott E., Malik, Amyn A., Huber, Gregory A., Omer, Saad B., Cucciniello, Maria, and Pin, Paolo
- Subjects
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VACCINATION of children , *COVID-19 vaccines , *HERD immunity , *ADULTS , *VACCINATION - 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 %). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2023
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