Political Ideology and Trust in Government to Ensure Vaccine Safety: Using a U.S. Survey to Explore the Role of Political Trust

Abstract

Since early 2020, the rapid expansion of COVID-19 has raised concerns about vaccine safety and the government’s handling of it. Particularly notable and concerning has been a growing number of people who oppose vaccines, as this opposition poses a threat to public health. Those for and against vaccination have become polarized along a political divide. Within this context, this study focuses on the role of political trust, exploring whether political ideology is associated with the perception that the government can ensure the safety of vaccines and whether there is a moderator that can alleviate the concerns of those who oppose the government’s handling of vaccine safety on ideological grounds. This study relies on the 2021 U.S. General Social Survey (GSS) and employs an ordered probit method because the dependent variable is an ordered category. The ordered probit model includes a weight provided by the U.S. GSS to account for the population. The sample size was 473 because of the inclusion of all the variables relevant to this study. The results obtained are as follows: First, conservatives associate negatively with support for the government’s handling of vaccine safety. Second, more importantly, conservatives exhibit a higher trust level toward the government to ensure vaccine safety if their level of political trust increases. The results point to important implications. Political ideology matters in how individuals view the government’s handling of vaccine safety. Political trust plays a key role in helping individuals alter their views toward the government’s handling of vaccine safety. This points to a need for the government to take political trust seriously and work hard to improve the public’s trust in the government.

What can public health communicators learn from Reddit? A perspective for the next pandemic

“…As an alternative, multidisciplinary researchers have begun to explore the potential of “inoculating” social media users against misinformation by familiarizing them with the common tactics that shady actors use to promote false and misleading vaccine narratives ( 23 ). Still others have taken a bigger-picture view, emphasizing the importance of proactive efforts to improve vaccine literacy ( 24 ) and public trust in government ( 25 ) to lay a foundation for improving vaccine uptake.…”

Trust, Interaction with Neighbors, and Vaccination during the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Cross-Sectional Analysis of Chinese Data

“…In addition to these key factors, an individual’s views and attitudes towards society have been highlighted as correlates of vaccination in an increasing number of studies. Notably, higher levels of social capital [ 10 , 11 , 12 ] and trust in government [ 13 , 14 , 15 ] are found to be in favor of vaccination in many countries.…”

“…Building upon previous studies [ 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 ], we examined how general trust in others, trust in government, and interaction with neighbors affect an individual’s decisions on vaccine uptake. General trust in others is a key element of social capital, which is defined as the quality of relationships among community members [ 16 ].…”

“…Trust in government, which refers to people’s beliefs that the government acts transparently and fairly in accordance with the public interest, has also been investigated as a factor related to vaccination willingness [ 13 , 14 , 15 ]. Analyzing vaccination practices in the context where the government takes the lead in managing the pandemic crisis makes it even more important to consider trust in the government.…”

“…Unlike most previous studies [ 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 ], this study distinguished individual- and community-level measures of general trust, trust in government, and interaction with neighbors, and examined their associations with vaccination at both levels. Researchers studying social capital have demonstrated that health outcomes and subjective well-being are correlated with social capital at both individual and community (neighborhood) levels [ 19 , 20 , 21 , 22 , 23 ].…”