Dynamical vaccination behavior with risk perception and vaccination rewards

Area of Science:

• Epidemiology
• Public Health Policy
• Behavioral Economics

Background:

• Vaccination is crucial for epidemic control, but individual vaccination decisions are influenced by psychological factors and perceived risks.
• Vaccine hesitancy and the preference for herd immunity pose challenges to achieving high vaccination rates.
• Reward mechanisms are increasingly used by countries to incentivize vaccination uptake.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a disease transmission model incorporating vaccination behaviors.
• To analyze the impact of infection and recovery rates on epidemic costs and prevalence.
• To evaluate the effectiveness of vaccination reward mechanisms on social costs and disease control.

Main Methods:

• Utilized the Susceptible-Infected-Recovered (SIR) epidemiological model.
• Integrated behavioral aspects of vaccination into the SIR framework.
• Introduced and analyzed three distinct vaccination reward mechanisms.
• Conducted numerical simulations to assess model outcomes.

Main Results:

• Infection and recovery rates significantly influence total costs and epidemic prevalence.
• Vaccination rewards that offset personal vaccination costs lead to the lowest total costs and disease prevalence.
• Early vaccination encouragement demonstrates the most effective impact on epidemic control.

Conclusions:

• Vaccination reward systems are effective tools for mitigating epidemics.
• Optimizing reward structures to align with individual costs is key to maximizing public health benefits.
• Proactive vaccination strategies initiated at the onset of an epidemic yield superior results.