Vaccination Acceptance Across Cultures: The Roles of Collectivism, Empathy, and Homophily

Abstract

How does culture influence vaccination acceptance? This is an important question facing managers, policymakers, and global health organizations. Even with effective vaccines for highly contagious diseases, humankind remains at risk from vaccine hesitancy. We conduct a largescale multilevel analysis of more than 400,000 survey respondents, finding that COVID-19 vaccination intentions are higher among people from countries higher in cultural collectivism (Study 1). Follow-up studies indicate that vaccination acceptance is higher among people that endorse collectivistic values because they feel more empathy for those afflicted by the disease (Studies 2a, 2b, 3), especially when victims of the disease have similar characteristics (e.g., political affiliation, lifestyle, personality) as themselves (Study 3). To encourage vaccination acceptance, we suggest promoting collectivistic values and empathic concern, as well as homophily through the portrayal of victims with characteristics like those hesitant to accept vaccination.

Collectivism, individualism and COVID-19 prevention: a cross sectional study of personality, culture and behavior among Canadians

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Well-Being in a Global World—The Role of International Marketing: An Editorial

“…In this first of two special issues, Wood (2022) offers a persuasive commentary on the problems addressed in this special issue, followed by five articles examining key issues related to consumers’ behaviors during the COVID-19 pandemic and offering compelling direction for marketing managers based on their collective findings. In the first article in the special issue, Leonhardt and Pezzuti (2022) investigate the critical—and, at times, controversial—issue of vaccine acceptance across cultures and report that vaccination intentions are higher among people from countries higher in collectivism. Next, two articles examine consumers’ consumption behaviors during the pandemic.…”

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“…Emphasizing community benefits in health messaging has also been shown to increase vaccination in individualistic-leaning societies [ 11 ]. This phenomenon may function at both the community and individual levels; data comparing COVID-19 vaccine uptake across 50 countries found that vaccine intentions were higher in countries with more collectivistic cultures and that individuals from individualistic cultures who endorsed collectivistic values were more likely to accept a COVID-19 vaccine [ 12 ]. What is unknown, and what we investigate in this paper, is the extent to which the collectivistic or individualistic orientation in society can be made salient through vaccine videos and whether such heightened salience affects how people view and interpret the underlying message to get vaccinated.…”