How do COVID-19 vaccine mandates affect attitudes toward the vaccine and participation in mandate-affected activities? Evidence from the United States.

The spread of COVID-19 has prompted many governments, schools, and companies to institute vaccine mandates. Proponents suggest that mandates will enhance public health and increase vaccination rates. Critics suggest that evidence of mandates' effectiveness is unclear and warn that mandates risk increasing societal inequalities if unvaccinated minority groups opt out of educational, commercial, and social activities where mandates are required. We conduct an original survey experiment on a nationally representative sample of 1,245 Americans to examine the efficacy and effect of COVID-19 mandates. Our findings suggest that mandates are unlikely to change vaccination behavior overall. Further, they may increase the likelihood that sizable percentages of the population opt out of activities where vaccines are mandated. We conclude that mandates that do go into effect should be accompanied by persuasive communications targeted to specific information needs and identities.

Factors influencing Covid-19 vaccine acceptance across subgroups in the United States: Evidence from a conjoint experiment.

Public health officials warn that the greatest barrier to widespread vaccination against Covid-19 will not be scientific or technical, but the considerable public hesitancy to take a novel vaccine. Understanding the factors that influence vaccine acceptance is critical to informing public health campaigns aiming to combat public fears and ensure broad uptake. Employing a conjoint experiment embedded on an online survey of almost 2,000 adult Americans, we show that the effects of seven vaccine attributes on subjects' willingness to vaccinate vary significantly across subgroups. Vaccine efficacy was significantly more influential on vaccine acceptance among whites than among Blacks, while bringing a vaccine to market under a Food and Drug Administration Emergency Use Authorization had a stronger adverse effect on willingness to vaccinate among older Americans and women. Democrats were more sensitive to vaccine efficacy than Republicans, and both groups responded differently to various endorsements of the vaccine. We also explored whether past flu vaccination history, attitudes toward general vaccine safety, and personal contact with severe cases of Covid-19 can explain variation in group vaccination hesitancy. Many subgroups that exhibit the greatest Covid-19 vaccine hesitancy did not report significantly lower frequencies of flu vaccination. Several groups that exhibited greater Covid-19 vaccine hesitancy also reported greater concerns about vaccine safety generally, but others did not. Finally, subgroup variation in reported personal contact with severe cases of Covid-19 did not strongly match subgroup variation in vaccine acceptance.

Model uncertainty, political contestation, and public trust in science: Evidence from the COVID-19 pandemic.

While scientific uncertainty always invites the risk of politicization and raises questions of how to communicate about science, this risk is magnified for COVID-19. The limited data and accelerated research timelines mean that some prominent models or findings inevitably will be overturned or retracted. In this research, we examine the attitudes of more than 6000 Americans across five different survey experiments to understand how the cue giver and cue given about scientific uncertainty regarding COVID-19 affect public trust in science and support for science-based policy. Criticism from Democratic political elites undermines trust more than criticism from Republicans. Emphasizing uncertainty in projections can erode public trust in some contexts. Downplaying uncertainty can raise support in the short term, but reversals in projections may temper these effects or even reduce scientific trust. Careful science communication is critical to maintaining public support for science-based policies as the scientific consensus shifts over time.