Understanding why people discriminate based on ethnicity, gender, or other observable group attributes has been one of the central topics in economics and other social sciences for decades.1 Since the seminal work of Phelps (1972) and Arrow (1973), it has been widely acknowledged that due to a lack of individual-level information decision makers often rely on a group attribute as a signal of unobserved 1 Researchers have produced a vast amount of evidence documenting discriminatory behavior based on ethnicity or gender on labor, housing, and consumer markets. Yinger (1998) and Altonji and Blank (1999) survey regression-based ( nonexperimental) evidence, and Riach and Rich (2002) and List and Rasul (2011) summarize related field experiments.

The reluctance of people to get vaccinated represents a fundamental challenge to containing the spread of deadly infectious diseases1,2, including COVID-19. Identifying misperceptions that can fuel vaccine hesitancy and creating effective communication strategies to overcome them are a global public health priority3–5. Medical doctors are a trusted source of advice about vaccinations6, but media reports may create an inaccurate impression that vaccine controversy is prevalent among doctors, even when a broad consensus exists7,8. Here we show that public misperceptions about the views of doctors on the COVID-19 vaccines are widespread, and correcting them increases vaccine uptake. We implement a survey among 9,650 doctors in the Czech Republic and find that 90% of doctors trust the vaccines. Next, we show that 90% of respondents in a nationally representative sample (n = 2,101) underestimate doctors’ trust; the most common belief is that only 50% of doctors trust the vaccines. Finally, we integrate randomized provision of information about the true views held by doctors into a longitudinal data collection that regularly monitors vaccination status over 9 months. The treatment recalibrates beliefs and leads to a persistent increase in vaccine uptake. The approach demonstrated in this paper shows how the engagement of professional medical associations, with their unparalleled capacity to elicit individual views of doctors on a large scale, can help to create a cheap, scalable intervention that has lasting positive impacts on health behaviour.

No abstract