Vaccination as personal public good provision

Vaccination against infectious diseases has both private and public benefits. We study whether social preferences-concerns for the well-being of other people-are associated with one's decision regarding vaccination. We measure these social preferences for 549 online subjects with a public-good game and an altruism game. To the extent that one gets vaccinated out of concern for the health of others, contribution in the public-good game is analogous to an individual's decision to obtain vaccination, while our altruism game provides a different measure of altruism, equity, and efficiency concerns. We proxy vaccine demand with how quickly a representative individual voluntarily took the initial vaccination for COVID-19 (after the vaccine was widely available). We collect COVID-19 vaccination history separately from the games to avoid experimenter-demand effects. We find a strong result: Contribution in the public-good game is associated with greater demand to voluntarily receive a first dose, and thus also to vaccinate earlier. Compared to a subject who contributes nothing, one who contributes the maximum ($4) is 58% more likely to obtain a first dose voluntarily in the four-month period that we study (April through August 2021). In short, people who are more pro-social are more likely to take a voluntary COVID-19 vaccination. Behavior in our altruism game does not predict vaccination. We recommend further research on the use of pro-social preferences to help motivate individuals to vaccinate for other transmissible diseases, such as the flu and HPV.

Medienart:

E-Artikel

Erscheinungsjahr:

2024

Erschienen:

2024

Enthalten in:

Zur Gesamtaufnahme - year:2024

Enthalten in:

medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences - (2024) vom: 22. Apr.

Sprache:

Englisch

Beteiligte Personen:

Reddinger, Jonathan Lucas [VerfasserIn]
Charness, Gary [VerfasserIn]
Levine, David [VerfasserIn]

Links:

Volltext

Themen:

Preprint

Anmerkungen:

Date Revised 25.04.2024

published: Electronic

Citation Status PubMed-not-MEDLINE

doi:

10.1101/2022.04.21.22274110

funding:

Förderinstitution / Projekttitel:

PPN (Katalog-ID):

NLM344428842