Social interactions and COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy: Evidence from a full population study in Sweden
2023 (English)In: PLOS ONE, E-ISSN 1932-6203, Vol. 18, no 11, article id e0289309
Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]
We investigate whether an individual's information milieu-an individual's residential neighborhood and co-workers-affects the decision to get a COVID-19 vaccine. The decision to accept or refuse a vaccine is intensely personal and involves the processing of information about phenomena likely to be unfamiliar to most individuals. One can thus expect an interplay between an individual's level of education and skills and the information processing of others whom with whom she can interact and whose decision she can probe and observe. Using individual-level data for adults in Sweden, we can identify the proportion of an individual's neighborhood and workplace who are unvaccinated as indicators of possible peer effects. We find that individuals with low levels of educational attainment and occupational skills are more likely to be unvaccinated when exposed to other unvaccinated individuals at work and in the residential neighborhood. The peer effects in each of these information milieus further increases the likelihood of not getting vaccinated-with the two acting as information channels that reinforce one another.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Public Library of Science (PLoS), 2023. Vol. 18, no 11, article id e0289309
Keywords [en]
Adult, COVID-19, COVID-19 Vaccines, Educational Status, Female, Humans, Social Interaction, Sweden, Vaccination, SARS-CoV-2 vaccine, Article, attitude, coronavirus disease 2019, coworker, decision making, household income, housing, human, immunization, income, neighborhood, occupation, vaccine hesitancy, workplace
National Category
Public Health, Global Health, Social Medicine and Epidemiology Economics
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:hj:diva-63030DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0289309PubMedID: 37983227Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-85177764608Local ID: GOA;intsam;920074OAI: oai:DiVA.org:hj-63030DiVA, id: diva2:1818414
2023-12-112023-12-112023-12-12Bibliographically approved