Covid-19 vaccine uptake: the role of civic capital to overcome the free rider problem

ABSTRACT

Vaccination rates are likely to reflect the expected benefits and drawbacks for individuals. As a larger share of the population gets vaccinated, individuals have more incentives to free ride and benefit from the positive externalities of a high vaccination rate, while not being affected by the potential harms of receiving vaccination. Using Covid-19 vaccination data at the municipality level in the Italian region of Lombardy, we show that communities with a higher level of civic capital were able to overcome this collective action problem. An indirect measure of the willingness to contribute to a public good (i.e. the share of residents paying the TV licence) proves to be particularly useful to predict the success of vaccination campaigns.

KEYWORDS:

• Vaccine uptake
• civic capital
• free rider problem
• prosocial behaviours

Acknowledgments

We acknowledge funding from the Italian Ministry of Education Progetti di Rilevante Interesse Nazionale (PRIN) grants 2017ELHNNJ “The economics of vaccination”. We are grateful to Alberto Dalmazzo, Giuliano Curatola, Alessio Muscillo, Paolo Pin, Edoardo Peruzzi and Costanza Usai for helpful comments. The authors also would like to thank the editor and three anonymous referees for their helpful suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

¹ The only two municipalities with a vaccination uptake above 100% are Dizzasco and Cingia de’ Botti, which vaccinated 628 and 1,149 individuals, respectively (compared to their 2020 residents; 602 and 1,147.).

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the Ministero dell’Università e della Ricerca [2017ELHNNJ “The economics of vaccination”].