Who do we trust? Differences in types of trust and beliefs in conspiracy theories between vaccinated and unvaccinated Europeans across 17 European countries

Abstract

A plethora of research has highlighted that trust in science, political trust, and conspiracy theories are all important contributors to vaccine uptake behavior. In the current investigation, relying on data from 17 countries (N = 30,096) from the European Social Survey we examined how those who received (and wanted to receive the COVID‐19 vaccine) compared to those who did not differ in their trust in: science, politicians and political parties, international organizations and towards people in general. We also examined whether they differed in how much they believed in conspiracy theories. Those who received (or wanted to receive) the COVID vaccine scored significantly higher in all forms of trust, and lower in conspiracy theory beliefs. A logistic regression suggested that trust in science, politicians, international organizations, as well as belief in conspiracy theories were significant predictors, even after accounting for key demographic characteristics.

Beyond Left and Right: The Role of System Trust in COVID-19 Attitudes and Behaviors Across Eight Western Countries

“…Within the anti-elite literature, anti-intellectualism has been found to help explain concern about COVID-19 and social distancing behavior (Merkley and Loewen 2021), and vaccine hesitancy has been found to be predicted by anti-elite worldviews (Stoeckel et al 2022), conspiracy beliefs (Syropoulos and Gkinopoulos 2023), and populist attitudes more generally (Juen et al 2021;Edwards et al 2021). The common explanation within this research is that populists, anti-elitists, or antiintellectuals distrust scientific experts and established political institutions.…”

“…Studies have also found that trust in government is associated with attitudes and behaviors specifically related to the COVID-19 pandemic. While studies explaining threat appraisals have found mixed evidence (Devine et al 2021;Jennings et al 2021;Dryhurst et al 2020;Lim et al 2021), studies of trust in government and compliance with regard to government measures against COVID-19 have generally found that individuals with higher trust were more compliant (Bargain and Aminjonov 2020;Han et al 2021;Lalot et al 2022;Wright et al 2021;Olsen and Hjorth 2020;Lim et al 2021) and less hesitant towards vaccines during the pandemic (Jennings et al 2023;Syropoulos and Gkinopoulos 2023). Only a few studies do not confirm this pattern Clark et al 2020).…”