Vaccination as personal public good provision

Area of Science:

• Behavioral Economics
• Public Health
• Vaccinology

Background:

• Vaccination offers both individual and societal advantages.
• Understanding the drivers of vaccination decisions, particularly voluntary uptake, is crucial for public health.
• Social preferences, or concern for others' well-being, may influence health behaviors.

Approach:

• Assessed social preferences in 549 online participants using a public-good game and an altruism game.
• Measured voluntary COVID-19 vaccination timing as a proxy for vaccine demand.
• Collected vaccination history separately from game participation to mitigate bias.

Key Points:

• Contributions in the public-good game, reflecting pro-social behavior, strongly correlated with earlier voluntary COVID-19 vaccination.
• Individuals contributing maximally in the public-good game were 58% more likely to get a first dose within the study period.
• Behavior in the altruism game did not predict vaccination decisions.

Conclusions:

• Pro-social preferences are significantly associated with increased voluntary vaccination uptake.
• Findings suggest leveraging social preferences could be a strategy to encourage vaccination for infectious diseases.
• Further research is recommended to explore this association for other vaccines like influenza and HPV.