Combating COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy: A Synthetic Public Segmentation Approach for Predicting Vaccine Acceptance.

OBJECTIVE: Vaccine hesitancy impacts the ability to cope with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) effectively in the United States. It is important for health organizations to increase vaccine acceptance. Addressing this issue, this study aimed to predict citizens' acceptance of the COVID-19 vaccine through a synthetic approach of public segmentation including cross-situational and situational variables. Controlling for demographics, we examined institutional trust, negative attitudes toward, and low levels of knowledge about vaccines (ie, lacuna public characteristics), and fear of COVID-19 during the pandemic. Our study provides a useful framework for public segmentation and contributes to risk and health campaigns by identifying significant predictors of COVID-19 vaccine acceptance. METHOD: We conducted an online survey on October 10, 2020 (N = 499), and performed hierarchical regression analyses to predict citizens' COVID-19 vaccine acceptance. RESULTS: This study demonstrated that trust in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and federal government, vaccine attitude, problem recognition, constraint recognition, involvement recognition, and fear positively predicted COVID-19 vaccine acceptance. CONCLUSIONS: This study outlines a useful synthetic public segmentation framework and extends the concept of lacuna public to the pandemic context, helping to predict vaccine acceptance. Importantly, the findings could be useful in designing health campaign messages.

Effects of Individuals' Cultural Orientations and Trust in Government Health Communication Sources on Behavioral Intentions During a Pandemic: A Cross-Country Study.

Public health messages disseminated by trusted government authorities are likely to have more influence over individuals' intentions and behaviors. However, individuals worldwide have different levels of trust in government authorities, which leads to varying levels of compliance intentions. Additionally, these trust levels may vary during major public crises, such as pandemics. Based on a COVID-19 pandemic communication survey (N = 3,065) disseminated throughout six countries (Australia, Finland, Italy, South Korea, Sweden, and the United States), this study examined the association among trust in distinct government sources, cultural orientations, and health behavioral intentions. Findings indicated that trust in official health communication sources at four governmental levels (i.e. national government, the head of the national government, the national health authority, and the chief representative of the national health authority) was related to vaccination intentions and other behavioral compliance intentions (i.e. willingness to prevent COVID-19 infection in other ways). Meanwhile, these direct associations were mediated by the cultural orientations of power distance and uncertainty avoidance. Findings also revealed that the direct association of trust in government sources and the indirect relationship through the above cultural orientations varied by country. This study offers insight into the important role of credible sources and individuals' cultural orientations in the domain of health communication aimed at influencing behavioral intentions.

Transformational leadership, integration and supply chain risk management in Vietnam's manufacturing firms

Purpose>Due to an increase in vulnerability, supply chain risk management (SCRM) has gained the attention of both researchers and practitioners. Although different approaches have been widely used to discuss the implementation of risk management, the impacts of leadership factors on SCRM have received little attention. To fill this gap in the literature, this study aims to examine whether transformational leadership and integration facilitate SCRM and enhance performance.Design/methodology/approach>Using 261 Vietnamese manufacturing companies as sample, this study applies partial least squares based structural equation modeling (SEM) to test the proposed hypotheses.Findings>This study demonstrates three contributions for exist leadership and supply chain literature. First, the characteristics of transformational leadership effectively facilitate the internal and external integration in supply chain with higher responsiveness, visibility and integration. Second, transformational leadership has indirectly effect to supply chain risk management practice (SCRMP) throughout supply chain integration (SCI). Additionally, three dimensions of integration enable SCRM and partially mediate the relationship between transformational leadership and SCRM. Furthermore, SCRM not only plays a partially mediating role in the relationship between internal integration, customer integration and supply chain performance but also fully mediates the relationship between supplier integration and supply chain performance.Practical implications>This study addresses that the paper extends the content of the relationship between transformational leadership and SCI by three integration dimensions among of exist literature. Transformational leadership should be literarily included into part of leadership strategy on SCRMPs since it is shown to have an indirectly positive improvement effect on SCRM. In addition, the paper is targeted the supply chain downstream performance (SCDP) with integration and risk management with the concept of considering downstream performance is a key section to confront the external stakeholder and customers, Finally, the authors emphasized companies should be aware of the importance about how to include transformational leadership, SCI and SCRMP into its supply chain management.Originality/value>This study contributes to the SCRM literature by empirically examining the effect of transformational leadership and SCI on SCRM and performance in Vietnam, which is few and far better than that of developed countries.

Embodying Temporality in Response Efficacy: How Coping Appraisal Promotes Preventive Behavioral Engagement During the Ongoing Pandemic.

This study heightens the understanding of response efficacy as a determinant of engagement in preventive behavior during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. To achieve a more nuanced conceptualization of response efficacy, this study proposes and examines a time-based coping appraisal framework, drawing upon a part of the extended parallel process model (EPPM). The current study investigates how the temporality of coping response message features work in generating social distancing behavioral intentions and explicates the role of anticipated emotions in this motivational process. Results of the experimental study (N = 584) indicate that proximal future framed coping response message (vs. distant future message) led to greater response efficacy, which in turn led to greater anticipated guilt and pride, and by extension increased social distancing behavioral intentions. Mediation analyses also demonstrated the indirect effects of the temporality conditions (proximal future-oriented message vs. distant future-oriented message) on social distancing intentions through response efficacy, anticipated guilt, and anticipated pride. The theoretical and practical implications of this study are discussed.

Does Culture Matter? Measuring Cross-Country Perceptions of CSR Communication Campaigns about COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought several challenges to businesses and societies. In response, many corporations have supported local communities and authorities in the management of the pandemic. Although these initiatives, which can be considered forms of corporate social responsibility (CSR), were highly coupled with explicit CSR communication campaigns, little is known about whether these campaigns were effective. Previous research indicates that culture can shape people’s perceptions of CSR initiatives and communications, suggesting that businesses pay attention to careful consideration of cultural norms for effective CSR communication. However, the COVID-19 pandemic as a new CSR setting may challenge earlier findings. This study empirically investigates whether three cultural factors (individualism/collectivism, uncertainty avoidance, and power distance) affect public perceptions measured as recall of and favorability towards corporate COVID-19 response initiatives across six countries. Findings from a representative survey of adults across these countries show that respondents in individualistic and collectivistic countries recall these CSR communication campaigns about these corporate COVID-19 response initiatives quite differently, and these are related to differences in power distance and uncertainty avoidance. However, no difference was found in overall corporate favorability, indicating that cultural factors did not affect levels of favorability towards such initiatives. This, we argue, can be explained by the global dimension of the COVID-19 pandemic, which is the context of these CSR initiatives. This study contributes to CSR communication literature with empirical findings from a global pandemic setting. It offers businesses and managers empirical grounds to understand the communicative impact of COVID-19 response initiatives, which can inform future CSR actions.