Which hospital workers do (not) want the jab? Behavioral correlates of COVID-19 vaccine willingness among employees of Swiss hospitals

Abstract

In many countries, the current vaccination rates are stagnating, to the extent that vaccine hesitancy—the delay or refusal to take recommended vaccinations—forms a major obstacle to ending the COVID-19 pandemic. This tendency is particularly concerning when observed among healthcare workers who are opinion leaders on medical matters for their patients and peers. Our study surveys 965 employees of two large Swiss hospitals and profiles vaccine-hesitant hospital employees using not only socio-demographic characteristics, but also a comprehensive set of standard behavioral preference measures: (i) Big-5 personality traits, (ii) risk-, time- and social preferences, and (iii) perceived prevailing social norms. Using multinomial probit models and linear probability models, we find that vaccine-hesitant hospital employees are less patient and less likely to perceive vaccination as the prevailing social norm—in addition to replicating previously published socio-demographic results. Our findings are robust to a range of model specifications, as well as individual and situational covariates. Our study thus offers actionable policy implications for tailoring public-health communications to vaccine-hesitant hospital employees.

Crisis experience and the deep roots of COVID-19 vaccination preferences

“…Later research focused on the role of accompanying policies such as information campaigns (e.g. Freeman et al, 2021) or mandatory enforcement (Graeber et al, 2021;Schmelz, 2021;Schmelz and Bowles, 2021;Schmelz and Bowles, 2022) as well as behavioral correlates (Rieger et al, 2020;Siegrist and Bearth, 2021;Asri et al, 2022). We advance on these studies by proposing that, conditional on socioeconomic characteristics, individual preferences towards COVID-19 vaccination are deeply rooted in previous experience of comparable crises.…”