Sociopolitical and psychological correlates of COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy in the United States during summer 2021

Justin Stoler, Casey A. Klofstad, Adam M. Enders and Joseph E. Uscinski

Social Science & Medicine, 2022, vol. 306, issue C

Abstract: Vaccine hesitancy and refusal continue to hamper COVID-19 control efforts. Throughout the pandemic, scientists and journalists have attributed lagging COVID-19 vaccination rates to a shifting set of factors including demography, experiences during the height of the pandemic, political views, and beliefs in conspiracy theories and misinformation, among others. However, these factors have rarely been tested comprehensively, in tandem, or alongside other potentially underlying psychological factors, thus limiting our understanding of COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy. This cross-sectional study assesses a diverse set of correlates of COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy identified in previous studies using US survey data (N = 2055) collected in July–August 2021. The survey contained modules designed to assess various sociopolitical domains and anti- and pro-social personality characteristics hypothesized to shape vaccine hesitancy. Using logistic and multinomial regression, we found that the strongest correlate of vaccine hesitancy was belief in misinformation about the COVID-19 vaccines, though we surmise that this common explanation may be endogenous to vaccine hesitancy. Political beliefs explained more variation in vaccine hesitancy—and in particular, vaccine refusal—after belief in COVID-19 vaccine misinformation was excluded from the analysis. Our findings help reconcile numerous disparate findings across the literature with implications for health education and future research.

Keywords: Vaccine; COVID-19; Vaccine hesitancy; Conspiracy theory; Misinformation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S027795362200418X
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:socmed:v:306:y:2022:i:c:s027795362200418x

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/supportfaq.cws_home/regional
http://www.elsevier. ... _01_ooc_1&version=01

DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2022.115112

Access Statistics for this article

Social Science & Medicine is currently edited by Ichiro (I.) Kawachi and S.V. (S.V.) Subramanian

More articles in Social Science & Medicine from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().