Understanding COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy Through an Organizational Behaviour Lens

Abstract

Vaccine hesitancy during the COVID-19 pandemic has been a worldwide public health challenge. Organizational behaviour, the study of people’s behaviours in organizational settings, can be used to identify the behavioural drivers contributing to vaccine hesitancy and to develop targeted strategies to combat those drivers and improve vaccine uptake. Some common behaviours driving vaccine hesitancy arise from individualism, motivation, attitude, perception, groupthink, heuristics and cognitive bias. Organizational behaviour strategies to combat vaccine hesitancy include fostering a collectivist attitude, overcoming personal barriers to communication such as individual beliefs and values, utilizing motivation theories to target the individualistic mindset, and overcoming attitudes and perceptions by addressing heuristics and cognitive biases.

Parental vaccine hesitancy and acceptance of a COVID-19 vaccine: An internet-based survey in the US and five Asian countries

“…Conversely, in China, where vaccine hesitancy was lower, a more collectivist culture framework prevails [ 29 , 30 ]. Previous research has found that individualistic attitudes can contribute to vaccine hesitancy, whereas collectivist orientations tend to mitigate such hesitancy [ 31 ]. How this paradigm can be applied to each country, is uncertain, given large diversities of cultures within country.…”