Does Relationship Matter during a Health Crisis: Examining the Role of Local Government- Public Relationship in the Public Acceptance of COVID-19 Vaccines

ABSTRACT

Viewing government-public relationships as important antecedents of individuals’ health protection behaviors, this study uses a relationship management approach to examine COVID-19 vaccine promotion among local government agencies. The study hypothesizes that the quality of local government-public relationships is positively associated with pro-vaccine outcomes, including more frequent risk information seeking, pro-vaccine attitudes, and greater vaccination intention. In addition, an important pathway through which the government-public relationship promotes vaccination acceptance is by enhancing the public’s risk perceptions. Using a representative community sample, findings support the positive roles of certain but not all relationship quality variables in predicting vaccine acceptance. Meanwhile, risk perceptions consistently predict risk information seeking, pro-vaccine attitudes, and vaccination intention.

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1. The survey was part of a larger study examining individuals’ relationships with both CDC and a local health department, the Houston Health Department. Given the study’s focus on local public agencies, only the portion of data regarding individuals’ perception and interaction with the Houston Health Department was used. Therefore, all questions regarding individuals’ assessment of OPR quality and their information seeking behaviors were asked with reference to the specific government agency, the Houston Health Department.

2. Straightling refers to the behavior when respondents give identical or nearly identical answers to items using the same response scale, and these responses are typically considered invalid and thus should be removed (Kim et al., 2019).

3. As a rule of thumb, a chi-square to degrees-of-freedom (χ²/df) ratio should be less than 3. CFI greater than .90 indicates an acceptable fit. RMSEA ≤ .05 indicates an excellent fit, RMSEA ≤ .08 a satisfactory fit, RMSEA between .08 and .10 a fair fit, and RMSEA ≥ .10 a poor fit.

Additional information

Funding

The study is funded by the Enhance Research on COVID-19 and the Pandemic Grant from the University of Houston.