Ethical concerns of vaccine hesitant Canadians

Vaccine hesitancy persists across Canada. Research on vaccine hesitancy has tended to overlook the contribution of distinctly ethical concerns regarding vaccines and vaccine policies, despite their prominence in societal debates concerning vaccination. This study begins to fill the gap of understanding the ethical concerns of vaccine hesitant individuals.

Semi-structured interviews were conducted with twelve participants from across Canada. Our study was guided by Betsch's 5 antecedents to vaccination and Giubilini's ethics of vaccination.

Five themes that describe participants' ethical concerns were generated: freedom, consent, motivations of pharmaceutical companies, what is owed to others, recognition of terminology as 'ethical. Participants demonstrated variation and gaps in understanding of ethical concepts and terminology as they relate to vaccination, despite expressing concerns of an ethical nature.

Three themes of our study align with Betsch's framework: Consent = Constraints, Pharmaceutical Concerns = Confidence, and What is Owed to Others = Collective Responsibility. There is opportunity for further research exploring the ethical concerns of vaccine hesitant individuals framed as Choice that explores consent and vaccine policies that are not explicitly described in other vaccine hesitancy frameworks.

This is the first study in Canada that explores the distinctly ethical concerns of vaccine hesitant individuals. Freedom, consent, motivations of pharmaceutical companies, and what is owed to others were identified as ethical issues related to vaccine hesitancy.