Vaccine Hesitancy and Susceptibility to SARS-CoV-2 Misinformation in Japanese Youth: The Contribution of Personality Traits and National Identity

Damian J. Rivers (), Giancarla Unser-Schutz and Nathanael Rudolph
Additional contact information
Damian J. Rivers: School of Systems Information Science, Future University Hakodate, Hakodate 041-8655, Japan
Giancarla Unser-Schutz: Department of Interpersonal and Social Psychology, Rissho University, Tokyo 141-8602, Japan
Nathanael Rudolph: Faculty of Science and Engineering, Kindai University, Osaka 577-8502, Japan

IJERPH, 2023, vol. 21, issue 1, 1-19

Abstract: During the pandemic, the Japanese government drew upon the cultural concept of jishuku , or personal self-constraint, requesting that individuals accept responsibility for their behaviors and consider minimizing the potential negative impact on others. While the jishuku approach to pandemic management rests upon the established and persuasive influence of cultural norms, variability in adherence can be expected according to age. This article documents an investigation into factors impacting vaccine hesitancy and susceptibility to SARS-CoV-2 misinformation among Japanese youth. The point of departure is the belief that attitudes and behaviors, such as those underpinning the jishuku approach to pandemic management, arise from within a relational framework. Therefore, developmental characteristics, such as personality traits, and in-group affinity attachments, such as facets of national identity, can be expected to function as predictors of health attitudes and behaviors. The tested structural model of hypothesized interactions accounted for 14% of the observed variance in vaccine hesitancy and 20% in susceptibility to SARS-CoV-2 misinformation. With the inclusion of gender, political ideology, and trust in government SARS-CoV-2 response as control variables, the respecified model increased the amount of variance observed in vaccine hesitancy to 30% and to 25% in susceptibility to SARS-CoV-2 misinformation. The outcomes are discussed in relation to the communication of coherent public health discourse relative to personality traits and facets of national identity.

Keywords: Japan; misinformation; national identity; personality; SARS-CoV-2; vaccination; youth (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/21/1/42/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/21/1/42/ (text/html)

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:gam:jijerp:v:21:y:2023:i:1:p:42-:d:1308746

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().