Psychological predictors of COVID-19 vaccination in New Zealand

ABSTRACT

Is it possible to predict COVID-19 vaccination status prior to the existence and availability of COVID-19 vaccines? Here, we present a logistic model by regressing decisions to vaccinate in late 2021 on lagged sociodemographic, health, social, and political indicators from 2019 in a sample of New Zealand adults aged between 18 and 94 (M-age = 52.92, SD = 14.10;62.21% women;N = 5324). We explain 31% of the variance in decision making across New Zealand. Significant predictors of being unvaccinated were being younger, more deprived, reporting less satisfaction with general practitioners, lower levels of neuroticism, greater levels of subjective health and meaning in life, higher distrust in science and in the police, lower satisfaction in the government, as well as political conservatism. Additional cross-sectional models specified using the same, and additional COVID-19-specific factors are also presented. These findings reveal that vaccination decisions are neither artefacts of context nor chance, but rather can be predicted in advance of the availability of vaccines.