Is european attachment sufficiently strong to support an EU fiscal capacity: Evidence from a conjoint experiment

Based on a conjoint survey experiment with 10,000 respondents from France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands and Spain at the end of March/beginning of April 2020, we explore how individual characteristics shape support among Eurozone citizens for a European Union (EU) budgetary assistance instrument to combat adverse temporary or permanent economic shocks hitting EU Member States. We consider particularly the role of socioeconomic factors, such as income and education, covid fears and European attachment. Remarkably, how covid worries and European attachment affect the support for specific designs of the assistance instrument is not affected by other factors, in particular not by socioeconomic factors. These latter factors play an important role affecting support, independent of European attachment. Programs with European Commission monitoring (and recommendations) and cross-country redistribution, possibly even mandatory towards poor countries, can count on stronger support from those with higher European attachment. Those with strong covid fears are generally more in favour of EU budgetary assistance, mandatory spending of assistance on healthcare and redistribution to poor countries. Programs with Commission monitoring (and recommendations) receive extra support from high-income and highly-educated individuals. Also, the latter group specifically favors potential or mandatory cross-border redistribution. The independent role of individual European attachment suggests that instruments other than socioeconomic policies, e.g. better information provision about its use, may help raise support for an EU assistance instrument. © 2023 The Author(s)

Is european attachment sufficiently strong to support an EU fiscal capacity: Evidence from a conjoint experiment

Based on a conjoint survey experiment with 10,000 respondents from France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands and Spain at the end of March/beginning of April 2020, we explore how individual characteristics shape support among Eurozone citizens for a European Union (EU) budgetary assistance instrument to combat adverse temporary or permanent economic shocks hitting EU Member States. We consider particularly the role of socioeconomic factors, such as income and education, covid fears and European attachment. Remarkably, how covid worries and European attachment affect the support for specific designs of the assistance instrument is not affected by other factors, in particular not by socioeconomic factors. These latter factors play an important role affecting support, independent of European attachment. Programs with European Commission monitoring (and recommendations) and cross-country redistribution, possibly even mandatory towards poor countries, can count on stronger support from those with higher European attachment. Those with strong covid fears are generally more in favor of EU budgetary assistance, mandatory spending of assistance on healthcare and redistribution to poor countries. Programs with Commission monitoring (and recommendations) receive extra support from high-income and highly-educated individuals. Also, the latter group specifically favors potential or mandatory cross-border redistribution. The independent role of individual European attachment suggests that instruments other than socioeconomic policies, e.g. better information provision about its use, may help raise support for an EU assistance instrument.

Vaccine nationalism among the public: A cross-country experimental evidence of own-country bias towards COVID-19 vaccination.

What types of vaccines are citizens most likely to accept? We argue that citizens' identification with their nation may lead them to prefer vaccines developed and produced within their national borders, to the exclusion and/or detriment of vaccines from other nations. We administered a conjoint experiment requesting 15,000 adult citizens across 14 individual countries from around the world to assess 450,000 profiles of vaccines that randomly varied on seven attributes. Beyond vaccine fundamentals such as efficacy rate, number of doses, and duration of the protection, we find that citizens systematically favor vaccines developed and produced in their own country of residence. The extent of preference in favor of vaccines developed and produced within the national borders is particularly large among citizens who identify more strongly with their nation, suggesting nationalism plays a role in explaining the bias in favor of vaccines developed and produced locally. This public opinion bias on vaccine preferences has significant theoretical and practical implications.

COVID-19 booster uptake among US adults: Assessing the impact of vaccine attributes, incentives, and context in a choice-based experiment.

OBJECTIVE: Evidence shows that booster shots offer strong protection against the Omicron variant of COVID-19. However, we know little about why individuals would receive a booster compared to the initial decision to vaccinate. We investigate and assess the factors that affect individuals' reported willingness to receive the COVID-19 vaccine booster. This information can aid in tailoring public health messaging to communicate attributes that are associated with individuals' attitudes toward the COVID-19 booster. RATIONALE: Existing research provides little insight into whether the same factors that affect Americans' likelihood of accepting initial vaccination against COVID-19 also affect booster uptake. Our experiment also examines the influence of contextual information about a novel variant on willingness to receive a booster. METHODS: We administered a conjoint experiment (N = 2740 trials) in a survey of fully vaccinated US adults that had not yet received a COVID-19 booster (N = 548) to assess the impact of varied vaccine attributes on willingness to receive a booster. RESULTS: The most important factors associated with higher willingness to receive a booster were efficacy, manufacturer, and the size of a financial incentive. Protection duration and protection against future variants vs. only current variants had modest influence. A contextual prime reporting that some public health experts believe the Omicron variant is more contagious, but less lethal than those previously seen, significantly increased favorability toward boosters. This provides potential motivation and guidance for vaccination campaigns to emphasize these variant-specific traits. CONCLUSION: With several vaccines with varying degrees of efficacy available to consumers, emphasizing boosters with a high efficacy would likely improve attitudes toward boosters. Financial incentives and predispositions toward manufacturers also matter. Concerns about more contagious variants may spur uptake, even if such variants are less lethal.

Coronavirus vaccine hesitancy among unvaccinated Austrians: Assessing underlying motivations and the effectiveness of interventions based on a cross-sectional survey with two embedded conjoint experiments.

Background: To date, Austria is among the countries with the lowest coronavirus vaccination rates in Western Europe. It has announced the introduction of a general vaccine mandate but is experiencing an increasing societal polarization over this issue. We, therefore, aimed to provide evidence on the underlying motivations of vaccine hesitancy and evaluate what kinds of interventions - information, incentives, and rules - might increase vaccination readiness. Method: We conducted a cross-sectional survey with a sample of 1,543 unvaccinated Austrian residents in October 2021, including two embedded conjoint experiments. Findings: We screened 8,190 individuals to recruit the sample matching the Austrian micro-census. In experiment 1, easing rather than tightening of societal restrictions, a fixed monetary reward compared to a lottery and physicians' recommendations were associated with significantly higher intentions to get vaccinated. In experiment 2, standard approval by European or national authorities and simple information had a significant positive effect on vaccination propensity. Among the unvaccinated, fear of side effects, beliefs that comorbidities or the desire to have children would not allow vaccination, the assumption that the own immune system would provide sufficient protection, conspirational thinking (e.g., the refusal to participate in a 'large genetic experiment'), low trust in societal institutions, and spiritual beliefs were very common. Interpretation: While many unvaccinated showed a low propensity to become vaccinated, we identified a cluster of 195 (23% of the participants without missing values) that could potentially be reached by information and incentives, including people with heightened comorbidity rates or a desire for children. Funding: Vienna Science and Technology Fund.

Citizens’ Attitudes to Contact Tracing Apps

Citizens’ concerns about data privacy and data security breaches may reduce the adoption of COVID-19 contact tracing mobile phone applications, making them less effective. We implement a choice experiment (conjoint experiment) where participants indicate which version of two contact tracing apps they would install, varying the apps’ privacy-preserving attributes. Citizens do not always prioritise privacy and prefer a centralised National Health Service system over a decentralised system. In a further study asking about participants’ preference for digital-only vs human-only contact tracing, we find a mixture of digital and human contact tracing is supported. We randomly allocated a subset of participants in each study to receive a stimulus priming data breach as a concern, before asking about contact tracing. The salient threat of unauthorised access or data theft does not significantly alter preferences in either study. We suggest COVID-19 and trust in a national public health service system mitigate respondents’ concerns about privacy.

Vaccine alliance building blocks: a conjoint experiment on popular support for international COVID-19 cooperation formats.

The design principles of institutions that visibly and significantly affect citizens' lives are likely to be politically salient. Popular support for these principles is in turn crucial for institutional viability and effectiveness. Transboundary pandemics are a case in point. Understanding citizens' preferences regarding the design of international alliances set up to mass-produce and distribute vaccines is likely to determine citizens' subsequent cooperation with vaccination campaigns. This study explores Germans' preferences for international COVID-19 vaccine alliance design principles. We conducted a conjoint experiment at a recurring cognitive moment in many pandemics' cycles, between the initial outbreak and a more devastating but still-unknown second wave, when infection rates were very low, yet no policy solutions had been developed. We analyzed preferences regarding four building blocks: (1) alliance composition (size; EU-centrism), (2) alliance distribution rules (joining cost; vaccine allocation), (3) vaccine nationalism (cost per German household; coverage in Germany) and (4) vaccine producer confidence (origin; type). Distribution rules, political ideology and personal perceptions of pandemic threat matter little. But a larger alliance size and dominant EU-country composition increase alliance support. And vaccine nationalism is key: support increases with both lower costs and larger coverage for own-nation citizens. Moreover, support goes down for Chinese and American producers and increases for Swiss and especially own-nation producers. In sum, a realist and technocratic outlook is warranted at the cognitive stage in pandemic cycles when no solutions have been found, yet the worst already seems to be over, as national self-interest reigns supreme in popular attitudes. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11077-021-09435-1.

Conditional Solidarity-Attitudes Towards Support for Others During the 2020 COVID-19 Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic presents a unique opportunity to study how humans allocate scarce resources in times of hardship. We study public preferences regarding who should get access to government aid for the self-employed, a bed in the intensive care unit, and permission to cross the border using original conjoint survey experiments administered to an incentivised online panel in Switzerland during the first and second waves of the pandemic in 2020. We find that across the three areas, even in extraordinary circumstances such as the COVID-19 pandemic, evaluations of deservingness to aid and support are still based on an underlying logic of conditional solidarity and identity: in all experiments, contributing to the community, be it through past actions and contributions or through current efforts, plays a crucial role in determining an individual's deservingness, as does their nationality (and legal status) with nationals being perceived as more deserving than non-nationals.

Determinants of COVID-19 vaccine preference: A survey study in Japan.

OBJECTIVE: Vaccination is a critical measure for containing the COVID-19 pandemic. We survey the determinants that affect the preference for COVID-19 vaccines in Japan, a vaccine hesitant nation. SETTING AND DESIGN: We conducted a randomized conjoint analysis survey of the preference for vaccines on the Internet by recruiting a nonprobability sample of 15,000 Japanese adults. The survey assigned 5 choice tasks to the respondents. In each task, the respondents evaluated 2 hypothetical COVID-19 vaccines and were asked which they would choose. The vaccine attributes included efficacy, major and minor adverse side effects, country of vaccine development and clinical trial, and vaccine type. TREATMENT: The choice task asked the participants to select a vaccine from 2 hypothetical vaccines as an optional vaccine or select a vaccine as mandated one with a probability of 0.5 for each. RESULTS: Compared to China-developed vaccines, domestically developed or US-developed vaccines raised the choice probability by 37.3 and 27.4 percentage points, respectively. A domestic clinical trial increased the choice probability by 14.8, an increase in efficacy from 50% to 90% increased that by 18.0, and a decrease in the risk of severe adverse side effects from 1 per 10 thousand to 1 per 1 million increased that by 16.9 percentage points, respectively. The vaccine type was irrelevant. Making vaccination compulsory increased the choice probability of China- and Russia-developed vaccines by 0.6 and 0.4, high-risk vaccines by 0.5, and a modestly effective (70%) vaccine by 0.4 percentage points, respectively. General vaccination hesitancy, political positions, demographic characteristics, education, and income were irrelevant. CONCLUSIONS: A domestically developed vaccine with a domestic clinical trial could substantially increase the preference for the vaccine. Making vaccination compulsory could modestly reduce the penalty for a vaccine with adverse side effects, geopolitical, and efficacy concerns, possibly through mitigating free-riding concerns to achieve herd immunity.

Public attitudes toward pandemic triage: Evidence from conjoint survey experiments in Switzerland.

The question of how to implement medical triages has become highly salient during the COVID-19 pandemic and continues to be actively discussed. It is important to know how members of the general public think about this issue. For one, knowledge about the public's standpoint can help resolve important questions where ethical considerations are by themselves not sufficient, for instance whether the patient's age should matter. It can also help identify if more communication with the public about medical ethics is needed. We study how members of the Swiss public would allocate intensive medical care among COVID-19 patients using data from two original conjoint survey experiments conducted in Switzerland in the context of the first and second pandemic waves in 2020 (N = 1457 & N = 1450). We find that our participants would not base triage decisions on the patient's age. However, they do give much importance to the patient's behavior prior and during illness, discriminate against non-nationals, and assign only a relatively small and inconsistent role to medical considerations. Our findings suggest that there is a need for more communication with the public about the ethics of medical triage.

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.

The perceived deservingness of COVID-19 healthcare in the Netherlands: a conjoint experiment on priority access to intensive care and vaccination.

BACKGROUND: Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, governments, health experts, and ethicists have proposed guidelines about ICU triage and priority access to a vaccine. To increase political legitimacy and accountability, public support is important. This study examines what criteria beyond medical need are deemed important to be perceived of priority COVID-19 healthcare access. METHOD: Two conjoint experiments about priority over ICU treatment and early COVID-19 vaccination were implemented in a probability-based sample of 1461 respondents representative of the Netherlands. Respondents were asked who should receive treatment out of two fictitious healthcare claimants that differed in in age, weight, complying with corona policy measures, and occupation, all randomly assigned. Average marginal coefficient effects are estimated to assess the relative importance of the attributes; attributes were interacted with relevant respondent characteristics to find whether consensus exists in this relative ranking. RESULTS: The Dutch penalize those not complying with coronavirus policy measures, and the obese, but prioritize those employed in 'crucial' sectors. For these conditions, there is consensus among the population. For age, young people are prioritized for ICU treatment, while the middle-aged are given priority over a vaccine, with younger respondents favoring healthcare for elderly claimants, while older respondents favor support for young cohorts. CONCLUSION: People who have no control over their social risk and are able to reciprocate to society are considered as more deserving of priority of COVID-19 healthcare. Our findings provide fair support for the implemented ethical guidelines about ICU-treatment and COVID-19 vaccines.