No evidence that collective-good appeals best promote COVID-related health behaviors

Rabb, Nathaniel; Glick, David; Houston, Attiyya N; Bowers, Jake; Yokum, David

doi:10.1073/pnas.2100662118

Cited by 29 publications

(25 citation statements)

References 7 publications

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“…Based on nationally representative data, this study tests if the impact of misinformation will be different from the impact of hesitancy information on COVID-19 vaccine intentions when compared to exposure to factual information by government health authorities. Moreover, as previous studies indicate that altruistic messaging could affect public acceptance of a vaccine [Loomba et al, 2021; also see (Rabb et al, 2021)], this study further differentiates between intentions to vaccinate to protect oneself and intentions to vaccinate to protect vulnerable groups, family, and friends.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 59%

Exposure to COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy Is as Impactful as Vaccine Misinformation in Inducing a Decline in Vaccination Intentions in New Zealand: Results from Pre-Post Between-Groups Randomized Block Experiment

Thaker

Subramanian

2021

Front. Commun.

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While recent studies have investigated how health messages on vaccine characteristics shift public intentions to get a COVID-19 vaccine, a few studies investigate the impact of real-world, widely shared vaccine misinformation on COVID-19 vaccine acceptance. Moreover, there is currently no research that investigates how exposure to hesitancy, as compared to misinformation, is associated with COVID-19 vaccination intentions. Based on data from a nationally representative survey experiment conducted in March 2021 (N = 1,083), exposure to outright COVID-19 vaccine misinformation as well as exposure to vaccine hesitancy induces a decline in COVID-19 vaccination intentions to protect self and to get the vaccine to protect others in New Zealand, compared to factual information from government authorities. Moreover, there is no significant difference in exposure to misinformation or hesitancy in the self-reported change in COVID-19 vaccination intentions. However, respondents are more likely to believe in vaccine hesitancy information and share such information with family and followers compared to misinformation. Implications for research in health communication campaigns on COVID-19 are presented.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 59%

Exposure to COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy Is as Impactful as Vaccine Misinformation in Inducing a Decline in Vaccination Intentions in New Zealand: Results from Pre-Post Between-Groups Randomized Block Experiment

Thaker

Subramanian

2021

Front. Commun.

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“…Recent studies have used similar factors to examine the impact of individual vs. collective frames on peoples' decision-making (Pittman, 2020;Rabb et al, 2021). Pittman (2020) examined individuals' behavior regarding meat consumption, flu vaccination, and eco-friendly sunscreen.…”

Section: Individual Vs Collective Framesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Message framing and COVID-19 vaccination intention: Moderating roles of partisan media use and pre-attitudes about vaccination

Borah

2022

Curr Psychol

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One of the ways to overcome the sheer devastation of the COVID-19 pandemic is to get vaccinated. However, vaccine hesitancy could be a significant barrier. The main purposes of the current study are to examine the impact of four types of theory-driven messages on COVID-19 vaccination intention and to understand the moderating role of partisan media use and vaccination attitudes. The study used a between-subject randomized online experiment with four conditions. The manipulation messages were presented as screenshots from the CDC's Facebook page. The total number of participants were 387 (female 43%, mean age 37 years). The participants were from the U.S. and older than 18 years. The findings show that loss vs. gain message frames did not have any impact on COVID-19 vaccine intention. The moderating effects of conservative media and attitudes show that in general, those who consumed lower conservative media and held positive attitudes were higher on vaccine intention, and individual vs. collective frames did not have a strong impact. However, among those participants who scored high on conservative media use, and held negative vaccination attitudes, the individual frame had a higher impact on vaccine intention. The current study experimentally tested the intertwined relationships among message frames, partisan media use, and attitudes on vaccine intention. These relationships are critical considering the political nature of the pandemic.

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“…Messages reporting how many people in one's country have been vaccinated may show less in uence than those reporting numbers at the state level, which in turn may show less in uence than those reporting city numbers. A similar distinction among reference groups is seen in COVID-related messages using imperatives (e.g., "do it for your community" versus "do it for your family" [45,46]).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 68%

The influence of social norms varies with “others” groups: Evidence from COVID-19 vaccination intentions

Rabb¹,

Bowers²,

Wilson³

et al. 2021

Preprint

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The theory that health behaviors spread through social groups implies that efforts to control the pandemic through vaccination will succeed if people believe that others in their groups are getting vaccinated. But “others” can refer to many (often overlapping) groups, such as one’s family, neighborhood, city, state, or political party. These distinctions and their relationship to behavior are understudied in the social norms and public health literature. One challenge to studying them is that many factors may confound making inferences from observed relationships between perceived social norms (what people believe others do) and intended behaviors (what people themselves will do) because there are often plausible common causes for both. For example, vaccination intentions and perceptions of one’s social group’s intentions could both increase with age, since age is a known COVID-19 risk factor and people may know more people in their own age groups. We address these issues by applying a matched design that approximates pair-randomized experiments to survey data collected in the US during late fall 2020 (N = 890) and spring 2021 (N = 996). We find that a strong relationship between perceived vaccination social norms and vaccination intentions remains when controlling for a host of real risk factors as well as dimensions known to predict COVID-19 preventive behaviors even though they are not associated with risk. The strength of the relationship declines as the queried social group grows larger and more heterogeneous. The relationship for co-partisans is second in magnitude to that of family and friends among Republicans but undetectable for Democrats. Sensitivity analysis shows that these relationships could be explained away only by an unmeasured variable with large effects on both social norms perceptions and vaccination intentions (odds ratios between two and nineteen times), and a prediction from the false consensus interpretation that intentions cause perceived social norms is not supported. We discuss the implications for public health policy and understanding social norms.

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No evidence that collective-good appeals best promote COVID-related health behaviors

Cited by 29 publications

References 7 publications

Exposure to COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy Is as Impactful as Vaccine Misinformation in Inducing a Decline in Vaccination Intentions in New Zealand: Results from Pre-Post Between-Groups Randomized Block Experiment

Exposure to COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy Is as Impactful as Vaccine Misinformation in Inducing a Decline in Vaccination Intentions in New Zealand: Results from Pre-Post Between-Groups Randomized Block Experiment

Message framing and COVID-19 vaccination intention: Moderating roles of partisan media use and pre-attitudes about vaccination

The influence of social norms varies with “others” groups: Evidence from COVID-19 vaccination intentions

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