Profiles of vaccine hesitancy: The relation between personal experience with vaccines, attitude towards mandatory vaccination, and support for anti-vaccine arguments among vaccine hesitant individuals

Abstract

This paper investigates the susceptibility to anti-vaccine rhetoric in the vaccine-hesitant population. Based on the literature on attitudes and attitude change it was assumed that susceptibility to anti-vaccine arguments may be related to personal experience with vaccination and to the strength of vaccine hesitant attitudes. The first aim of the study was to investigate the relation between personal experience with post-vaccination side effects and acceptance of select categories of anti-vaccine arguments. The second aim was to compare whether vaccination deniers and the vaccine-ambiguous group differ in their susceptibility to these arguments. The online survey was run in Poland on a final sample of 492 vaccine hesitant respondents. Results indicate that individuals who declared a negative experience with vaccination were persuaded by all types of anti-vaccine arguments. Moreover, pre-existing anti-vaccine skepticism may cause individuals to interpret negative symptoms as consequences of vaccines, further reinforcing the negative attitude. Additionally, it appeared that the vaccine-ambiguous believe in serious negative side effects of vaccination and ulterior motives of pharmaceutical companies, but do not believe that vaccines are ineffective. However, the opinion profile for vaccine deniers indicates that it may be a generalized stance, rather than a set of individual issues concerning different perceived negative aspects of vaccination.

Declared Intention (Not) to Be Vaccinated against COVID-19, and Actual Behavior—The Longitudinal Study in the Polish Sample

“…Organized anti-vaccine movements spreading their arguments through websites, which are growing in popularity, are also an important source of information for vaccine skeptics. People who refuse vaccination justify their position most frequently by their fear of the side effects of vaccination, their belief that vaccinations do not in fact protect against disease, and their distrust of pharmaceutical companies [11][12][13][14].…”

Predicting willingness to be vaccinated for Covid-19: evidence from New Zealand

“…Alternatively, a promotional programme could be implemented with the outcome of persuading these people that they are mistaken, and that the behaviour required by the policy measure (being vaccinated) is superior to any alternatives. This strategy is likely to fail if people in this quadrant hold strongly favourable, or unfavourable, attitudes as they are likely to engage in motivated reasoning [11,12]; i.e., filtering information that challenges their beliefs and attitudes. Finally, compliance among these individuals might be increased by investing resources in enforcement, to increase the likelihood of detection and prosecution, and legislating severe penalties for non-compliance.…”

“…Since confidence and complacency, and potentially constraints and collective responsibility, depend on awareness and beliefs, education and promotion are key strategies for changing awareness, beliefs, and attitudes to vaccine hesitancy and encouraging participation in vaccination programmes [3,6,7,8]. The success of these strategies depends on how malleable people's attitudes are [9] and how attentive they are to education and promotion activities [10,11,12].…”

“…With respect to preventing the spread of Covid-19, this raises the possibility that, on the one hand, the distribution of misinformation about Covid-19 vaccinations through social media may provoke changes in the beliefs and attitudes of people with low involvement in Covid-19 that are undesirable because they undermine willingness to be vaccinated [12,47,48]. Such misinformation may provide a self-serving rationale for failing to seek vaccination should that require an investment of time and effort.…”

“…7 Consequently, their attitudes are stable and resistant to change. These people may well engage in motivated reasoning [10,11,12]. Hence, those who have high involvement with, and a favourable attitude towards, being vaccinated will resist misinformation about Covid-19.…”