 Does searching online for vaccination information affect vaccination coverage? Evidence from Sub-Saharan African countriesOuattara Zieh Moussa and Kenji Takeuchi Economics & Human Biology, 2022, vol. 47, issue C Abstract: The Internet is reshaping the way people access health information. Over the past decades, an increasing number of people have been using the Internet to access vaccine-related information. Many studies suggest that the Internet can help improve people’s understanding of health issues but at the same time facilitate the rapid spread of misinformation. This study explores the impact that searching the Internet for immunization information has on vaccination coverage. Using Google trends data, we found that access to online vaccination information has impacted vaccine uptake from 2004 to 2017, in Sub-Saharan African countries. The results indicate an overall positive impact on vaccine uptake. We also found that the effects are heterogeneous among vaccines. The effect is statistically significant for the vaccine related to high-risk disease, but not significant for the controversial vaccine and the vaccine related to low-risk disease. Keywords: Sub-Saharan Africa; Google trends; Internet; Online information; Health; Vaccination (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ehbiol:v:47:y:2022:i:c:s1570677x22000776 DOI: 10.1016/j.ehb.2022.101181 Access Statistics for this article Economics & Human Biology is currently edited by J. Komlos, Inas R Kelly and Joerg Baten More articles in Economics & Human Biology from Elsevier |
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