COVID-19 Spillover Effects onto General Vaccine Attitudes
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2-27-2024
Department 1
Political Science
Abstract
Even amid the unprecedented public health challenges attributable to the COVID-19 pandemic, opposition to vaccinating against the novel coronavirus has been both prevalent and politically contentious in American public life. In this paper, we theorize that attitudes toward COVID-19 vaccination might “spill over” to shape attitudes toward “postpandemic” vaccination programs and policy mandates for years to come. We find this to be the case using evidence from a large, original panel study, as well as two observational surveys, conducted on American adults during the pandemic. Specifically, we observe evidence of COVID-19 vaccine spillover onto general vaccine skepticism, flu shot intention, and attitudes toward hypothetical vaccines (i.e., vaccines in development), which do not have preexisting attitudinal connotations. Further, these spillover effects vary by partisanship and COVID-19 vaccination status, with the political left and those who received two or more COVID-19 vaccine doses becoming more provaccine, while the political right and the unvaccinated became more anti-vaccine. Taken together, these results point to the salience and politicization of the COVID-19 vaccine impacting non-COVID vaccine attitudes. We end by discussing the implications of this study for effective health messaging.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1093/poq/nfad059
Recommended Citation
Trujillo, Kristin L., Jon Green, Alauna Safarpour, David Lazer, Jennifer Lin, and Matthew Motta. “Covid-19 Spillover Effects onto General Vaccine Attitudes.” Public Opinion Quarterly 88, no.1 (2024).
Required Publisher's Statement
This work is also available through the publisher's website: https://doi.org/10.1093/poq/nfad059