The Institutional Origins of Vaccines Distrust: Evidence from Former-Communist Countries

Abstract

How is trust in vaccines affected by exposure to Soviet communism? Using individual level evidence on vaccine trust with regards to its efficiency and safety from a long list of world countries, we document that exposure to Soviet communism reduces trust in vaccination. We show that exposure to socio-political regimes can explain limited trust in vaccines, which is explained by weak trust in government, medical personnel, medical advice from doctors as well as in people from the neighbourhood. These results suggest that roots of vaccine distrust lie in a wider distrust in public and state institutions resulting from the exposure to Soviet communism.

Persuasive Messages Will Not Increase COVID-19 Vaccine Acceptance: Evidence from a Nationwide Online Experiment

“…Some authors [9][10][11] identify higher COVID-19 vaccine acceptance in males but a major study by Lazarus et al [3] shows the opposite. International comparisons suggest the most positive attitudes are in Asian countries with a high level of trust in the central government and more negative in Central and Eastern Europe [3,4], possibly as a legacy of Soviet communism [13].…”

Emerging Europe's chronic distrust: Lessons from the region's COVID puzzle

“…In columns 3 and 9, respectively, we include levels of inequality and informality; then, we insert the quartile in which a given country would be found regarding these variables (columns 4 and 10), and finally a dummy measure indicating whether a given country is above the median for the variable across out sample (columns 5 and 11). Columns 6,7,and 8 in Panel A and 12,13,14 in Panel B add quadratic terms for the total fiscal measures.…”

“…In X′ iwcta, we include a range of fixed effects across all specifications to capture differences concerning time: year of birth, survey wave, year survey was conducted and three age bands. 13 We also control for a range of fixed effects to capture differences in individual characteristics: sex, tertiary education, self-reported health status and income scale. Finally we cluster standard errors, ε iwcta, at the country level.…”

“…p. 103). 13 The aim is not to create an abstract vision of freedom based on solid community relations among Hungarians. Instead of collective discipline, the main aim is to preserve the individual private sphere and to obtain or preserve the tranquillity that goes with it.…”

Negativity in online news coverage of vaccination rates in Serbia: a content analysis

“…15/2016, 88/2017. Similarly to a number of post-communist countries(Costa-Font et al, 2021), after introduction of mandatory immunizations in the second half of the twentieth century and a period of low incidence ofimmuno-preventive diseases, in the last decade Serbia has seen a drop in pediatric vaccine coverage. Despite it being mandatory, a trend of untimely and delayed measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccinations has been observed (Institute of Public Health of Serbia, 2016, 2018).…”