Doing it for us: Community identification predicts willingness to receive aCOVID‐19 vaccination via perceived sense of duty to the community

Abstract

The COVID‐19 pandemic has presented huge challenges for communities across the world. Vaccines offer the best hope for controlling its deleterious effects, but not everybody is willing to be vaccinated, so it is important to explore variables that might predict vaccination willingness. The present study addressed this by drawing upon the Social Identity Approach, which posits that people's membership of social groups is consequential for their thoughts and behaviour. Specifically, it was predicted that people's strength of identification with their local community (a social group that came to particular prominence during the pandemic) would positively predict their willingness to engage in community‐related prosocial normative behaviour (i.e., their perceived sense of duty, as a community member, to get vaccinated) and that this, in turn, would predict higher levels of vaccination willingness. Participants ( N = 130) completed an online survey, which supported the hypothesized mediation model, even after controlling for subjective neighbourhood socio‐economic status and age (two variables that are particularly likely to impact upon vaccination willingness). To our knowledge, this is the first study to apply Social Identity Approach principles to the study of COVID‐19 vaccination willingness. The implications of the findings for governments' efforts to boost vaccine uptake are discussed. Please refer to the Supplementary Material section to find this article's Community and Social Impact Statement .

The Psychology of Coronavirus Behavioral Health Mindset, Vaccination Receptivity, Customer Orientation and Community Public Service

“…Our finding that the primary motive for the LouVax volunteers was prosocial also was consistent with Wakefield and Khauser’s (2021) small-scale ( n = 130) study of British respondents. They reported that people’s strength of identification with their local community positively predicted their willingness to engage in community-related prosocial normative behavior, in the form of obtaining vaccination.…”

People’s perceptions of, willingness-to-take preventive remedies and their willingness-to-vaccinate during times of heightened health threats

“…In fact, it is even possible that they know less about vaccines- as similar relationships between subjective and objective knowledge and acceptance were found for genetically modified foods: People that indicated to know more about genetically modified food actually achieved lower scores on objective knowledge and also, expressed lower acceptance of genetically modified food [ 34 , 35 ]. However, it is important to stress that knowledge provision will likely not change people’s minds regarding the mRNA vaccine, as vaccine hesitancy is best tackled with communication targeted to individual’s needs and by facilitating vaccine access by eliminating barriers [ 2 , 16 , 36 , 37 ]. Furthermore, these are just speculations as no measure of objective vaccine knowledge was included in this study.…”

COVID-19 Vaccine Uptake and Its Impacts in a Cohort of Gay and Bisexual Men in Australia

“…The association of vaccination with having more friends who intended to be vaccinated suggests that peer norms play a role in vaccination uptake. In other settings, identification with tight social networks has been associated with COVID-19 vaccination uptake and facilitates adherence to mutual protection [ 22 , 23 ]. Individuals who demonstrate specific health-seeking and protective behaviors undoubtedly encourage similar behaviors within their peer networks, thereby normalizing such behaviors.…”