Economic and behavioral factors in an individual's decision to take the influenza vaccination in Japan

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate what people in Japan consider when deciding to take the influenza vaccination. We develop an economic model to explain the mechanism by which people decide to take the influenza vaccination. Using our model and the data obtained from a large-scale survey we conducted in Japan, we demonstrated that people make rational decisions about vaccinations after considering its cost and benefits. People consider the probability of infection, severity of the disease, and the vaccination's effectiveness and side effects. The time discount rate is another consideration because the timing of costs and benefits of the vaccination differ. Risk aversion (fearing the contraction of the flu and vaccination's side effects) also affects the decision. People also deviate from rationality-altruism and status quo bias play important roles in the decision-making. Overconfidence indirectly affects the decision via perception variables such as the subjective probability of infection and assessment of influenza's severity. The decision also depends on attributes such as gender, age, and marital status. If the general perception of flu and vaccination is inaccurate, supplying accurate information regarding those may increase or decrease the vaccination rate, depending on whether this perception is, respectively, higher or lower than the objective rates. Thus, we examine whether the general perception is biased. Our survey suggests that disseminating information on the vaccination's effectiveness may increase the rate of vaccination, whereas that on the probability of infection may have the opposite effect.

Determinants of change in intention to receive influenza vaccination among health-care workers in Singapore

“…10 Human behavior is complex. Decisions on influenza vaccination include an evaluation of cost and benefits, 21,22 and HCWs' intention for influenza vaccination could also change over time. The decision depend on the context, setting, and their personal experience.…”

Can Decision Biases Improve Insurance Outcomes? An Experiment on Status Quo Bias in Health Insurance Choice

“…This violates central axioms of rational choice such as invariance and independence of irrelevant alternatives [3]. Status quo bias has been observed in a variety of contexts including consumption, savings, travel, organ donations, pharmacy choice, vaccination rates, and experimentally in stock trading and contributions to a public good [4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12]. The general finding of this literature is that in decisions containing a status quo or default option, choices are significantly influenced by and towards this option.…”

Risk‐taking in vaccination, surgery, and gambling environments: Evidence from a framed laboratory experiment

“…Immunization decisions involve a tradeoff between two risky alternatives suggesting an association between risk preferences and the demand for vaccinations. The empirical literature on this association is slim (see Tsutsui et al, , Tsutsui et al, , and Nuscheler & Roeder, ) and offers no clear‐cut results. This may well be due to an important shortcoming of this literature, the lack of control over individual risk.…”

“…The empirical literature on the relationship between risk aversion and vaccination is slim. Tsutsui, Benzion, Shahrabani, and Din (2010) and Tsutsui, Benzion, and Shahrabani (2012) find a positive relationship between risk aversion and the demand for flu shots in the United States and Japan, respectively. For German data, Nuscheler and Roeder (2016) confirm this finding for females but not for males where risk preferences play no role.…”