The management of the COVID-19 pandemic critically hinges on the approval of safe and effective vaccines but, equally importantly, on high willingness among lay people to use vaccines when approved. To facilitate vaccination willingness via effective health communication, it is key to understand both levels of skepticism towards an approved COVID-19 vaccine and the demographic, psychological and political sources of this skepticism. To this end, we examine the levels and predictors of willingness to use an approved COVID-19 vaccine in large, representative surveys from eight Western democracies that differ both politically and in terms of the severity of the pandemic: Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Sweden, Italy, United Kingdom, and United States (total N = 9,889). The data reveal large variation in vaccination willingness, both across and within countries ranging from 79 % in Denmark to 38 % in Hungary. Thus, most national levels fall below current best estimates for the required threshold for reaching herd immunity. Across national and demographic groups, the analyses demonstrate that a lack of vaccination willingness is associated with low levels of trust in authorities, conspiracy-related beliefs and a lack of concern about COVID-19. These factors also account for cross-national levels in vaccine willingness.

Health authorities emphasize the importance of "radical transparency" in communicating about future COVID-19 vaccines to counter conspiracy-based skepticism. While this resonates with research that highlights uncertainty as a major psychological predictor of conspiracy-related beliefs, no systematic evidence exists regarding the effectiveness of transparency as communication strategy. This study tests the effects of transparent communication about a COVID-19 vaccine using a pre-registered experiment fielded to large, representative samples of Americans and Danes (N > 6,800). The evidence confirms that positive but vague vaccine communication does not increase vaccine support but rather infuses attitudes with conspiracy-related beliefs. Against the hopes of authorities, however, there is little evidence that transparency alone can reduce vaccine skepticism, unless this transparency discloses a highly safe and effective vaccine. Additional analyses suggest that this reflects that vaccine skepticism is not grounded in psychological uncertainty but in deep distrust of authorities, which impedes the effectiveness of their communication.

Physical distancing is a crucial aspect of most countries’ strategies to manage the COVID-19 pandemic. However, keeping distance to others in public requires significant changes in conduct and behavior relative to ordinary circumstances. Throughout history, an effective strategy to make people engage in such behavioral change has been to morally condemn those who do not behave in an appropriate way. Accordingly, here, we investigate whether physical distancing has emerged as a moralized issue during the COVID-19 pandemic, potentially explaining the massive changes in behavior that have occurred across societies to halter the spread of the pandemic. Specifically, we utilize time-sensitive, representative survey evidence from eight Western democracies to examine the extent to which people (1) find it justified to condemn those who do not keep a distance to others in public and (2) blame ordinary citizens for the severity of the pandemic. The results demonstrate that physical distancing has indeed become a moral issue in most countries in the early phases of the pandemic. Furthermore, we identify the most important predictors of moralization to be age, behavioral change, social trust, and trust in the government. Except for minor differences, this pattern is observed within all countries in the sample. While moralization was high during the first wave of the pandemic, temporal analyses also indicate that moralization is lower in the second wave of the pandemic, potentially making it more difficult to engage in sufficient behavioral changes.

Government responses against COVID-19 has been met with salient protests across multiple Western democracies. Such protests have received significant media attention but we know little about the extent to which they reflect the views of the broader public. To fill this lacuna, this manuscript investigates how citizens across a number of Western democracies evaluate the interventions imposed by their government to contain the COVID-19 pandemic. Relying on large-scale, representative surveys from eight countries (Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, United Kingdom, United States and Sweden), we investigate how pandemic-specific and broader political attitudes correlate with support for government lockdowns in the first wave of the pandemic (March 19 -- April 8), a period hallmarked by stringent policies in all of our countries. We find medium to high levels of government support in all eight countries. Furthermore, our results suggest that these levels of support are generated by a unique coalition of fearful, prosocial and knowledgable individuals. While such groups are often political opponents, the unprecedented nature of the COVID-19 pandemic aligns their interests.