Social networks and vaccination decisions

Markus M. Mobius, Neel Rao and Tanya Rosenblat

No 07-12, Working Papers from Federal Reserve Bank of Boston

Abstract: We combine information on social networks with medical records and survey data in order to examine how friends affect one's decision to get vaccinated against the flu. The random assignment of undergraduates to residential halls at a large private university allows us to estimate how peer effects influence health beliefs and vaccination choices. Our results indicate that social exposure to medical information raises people's perceptions of the benefits of immunization. The average student's belief about the vaccine's health value increases by $5.00 when an additional 10 percent of her friends are assigned to residences that host inoculation clinics. Among students with no recent flu experience, a 10 percent rise in the number of friends living in residences with clinics raises cumulative valuations of the vaccine by $10.92, with 85 percent of this increase attributable to heightened perceptions about the medical benefits of immunization. We also find evidence of positive peer effects on individuals? vaccination decisions. A student becomes up to 8.3 percentage points more likely to get immunized if an additional 10 percent of her friends receive flu shots. Furthermore, the excess clustering of friends at inoculation clinics suggests that students coordinate their vaccination decisions with their friends.

Keywords: Stochastic analysis; Human behavior; Altruism; Medical care (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-hea and nep-soc
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.bostonfed.org/economic/wp/wp2007/wp0712.htm (text/html)
http://www.bostonfed.org/economic/wp/wp2007/wp0712.pdf (application/pdf)

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:fip:fedbwp:07-12

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Federal Reserve Bank of Boston Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Spozio ().