The intention to be vaccinated against COVID-19: stated preferences before vaccines were available

ABSTRACT

The goal of this note is to better understand which determinants can explain the willingness to get vaccinated against COVID-19. For this purpose, we conduct a survey in Germany in which we ask ourselves whether this ‘time is different’ from the willingness to be vaccinated against infection by influenza viruses. Our sample does not only comprise students with and without healthcare background, we also analyse a notable amount of healthcare professionals. We find that healthcare professionals exhibit a considerably greater willingness to be vaccinated against flu than healthcare and non-healthcare students. In contrast, the willingness to be vaccinated against COVID-19 is quite similar among the populations. In both contexts, COVID-19 and flu, trust (e.g. media, activities of the government) seems to play a central role in the decision whether to be vaccinated or not.

KEYWORDS:

• Willingness to be vaccinated
• trust
• COVID-19
• healthcare professionals

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• I10
• I18

Acknowledgments

We are indebted to the very helpful comments of the anonymous reviewer. The financial support of Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation – 388911356) is gratefully acknowledged.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹ https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/science/coronavirus-vaccine-tracker.html

² In an open question, we asked the subjects who refuse to be vaccinated against COVID-19 to give reasons. In total, we received 272 answers. The most frequent answers given by healthcare students, non-healthcare students, and healthcare professionals were lack of knowledge (e.g. only short-term research available, lack of evidence, unknown long term consequences, lack of experiences, shorted approval procedure) and very low risk for themselves (e.g. trust in own immune system, no risk group, no severe consequences after infection to be expected).

³ The vaccination rate against flu in Germany is relatively low. According to Ärzteblatt (2019), only 10% of the population were vaccinated in 2017/2018. The level is also low for people over 60 years even though flu immunisation is recommended for them.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the German Research Foundation [388911356].