Online health information seeking and Covid-19 vaccine hesitancy: Evidence from 50+ Europeans

Francesco Principe and Guglielmo Weber

Health Policy, 2023, vol. 138, issue C

Abstract: We use recently released data from the Survey of Health Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) to investigate the role of online health information seeking on Covid-19 vaccine hesitancy, which is defined as the reluctance or refusal to receive vaccinations despite the availability of vaccines. We adopt an instrumental variable strategy that exploits the computerization of workplaces occurred in the last century to deal with endogeneity. We find that searching for health information strongly reduces vaccine hesitancy. Results also show that individuals whose social networks suffered more during the outbreak, in terms of hospitalisations and deaths, are less likely to be hesitant. Improving individuals’ technological skills might have positive spill-over effects for public health.

Keywords: Covid-19; Internet; Vaccine hesitancy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I12 I18 L82 L86 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0168851023002270
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:hepoli:v:138:y:2023:i:c:s0168851023002270

DOI: 10.1016/j.healthpol.2023.104942

Access Statistics for this article

Health Policy is currently edited by Katrien Kesteloot, Mia Defever and Irina Cleemput

More articles in Health Policy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu () and ().