Vaccination hesitancy: fear, trust, and exposure expectancy of an Ebola outbreak

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between vaccination hesitancy and fear, trust, and expectation of a potential imminent and proximate outbreak of Ebola. Our hypothesis is that people engage in self-protective behavior against an infectious disease when they are: fearful about things in general; trustful of government's ability to control the disease outbreak; and anticipating a direct threat to their health. The self-protective behavior we examine is the intention to accept a prospective anti-Ebola vaccination. We examine these relationships with basic demographic variables taken into account: gender, age, ethnicity, race and education. The data source is a national random sample of 1,018 United States adults interviewed early during the 2014 Ebola outbreak. We constructed a new three-item Exposure Expectancy Scale (alpha = 0. 635) to measure the degree of respondents' expectancy of a potential nearby Ebola outbreak. Our data analysis employs multiple logistic regressions. The findings support our hypothesis: willingness to take the Ebola vaccination is positively associated with a generalized sense of fear, trust in the government's ability to control an outbreak of the disease, and expectation of a potential Ebola outbreak that is imminent and proximate. The addition of the exposure expectancy variable in this analysis adds significantly to our understanding of contributors to vaccine hesitancy.

Keywords: Expectancy; Exposure expectancy scale; Fear; Psychology; Public health; Sociology; Trust; Vaccination hesitancy.