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Randomized Controlled Trial
. 2023 Jun 7;41(25):3683-3687.
doi: 10.1016/j.vaccine.2023.05.017. Epub 2023 May 9.

Personal risk or societal benefit? Investigating adults' support for COVID-19 childhood vaccination

Chiara Chiavenna  1 , Laura P Leone  2 , Alessia Melegaro  3 , Tiziano Rotesi  4 , Scott E Bokemper  5 , Elliott E Paintsil  6 , Amyn A Malik  7 , Gregory A Huber  8 , Saad B Omer  9 , Maria Cucciniello  10 , Paolo Pin  11
Affiliations
Randomized Controlled Trial

Personal risk or societal benefit? Investigating adults' support for COVID-19 childhood vaccination

Chiara Chiavenna et al. Vaccine. .

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 %).

Keywords: COVID-19; Children; Health information; Parents; Vaccine hesitancy.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare the following financial interests/personal relationships which may be considered as potential competing interests: Alessia Melegaro reports financial support was provided by European Research Council. Alessia Melegaro reports financial support was provided by Romeo and Enrica Invernizzi Foundation.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Kernel empirical and nested RD plots of vaccination intentions among parents in Italy (left) and UK (right), comparing risk-treated and controls (top), herd-immunity-treated and controls (bottom). Estimates of RD are presented with 95 % CI.
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Kernel empirical and nested RD plots of vaccination intentions among non-parents in Italy (left) and UK (right), comparing risk-treated and controls (top), herd-immunity-treated and controls (bottom). Estimates of RD are presented with 95 % CI.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

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