The Impact of Collective Action Dilemma on Vaccine Hesitancy: Evidence from China

Overview

Journal Hum Vaccin Immunother

Specialty Allergy & Immunology

Date 2023 Sep 25

PMID 37747070

Authors

Yiqing Su

Xiaoting Zhang

Shifei Zhang

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Vaccine hesitancy has dramatically decreased the speed of vaccination and stalled global health development. While the factors influencing vaccine hesitancy and mitigation measures have been explored in depth by existing studies, research from the perspective of human interaction is lacking. Based on the theory of collective action, this paper analyzes how free riding behavior affects vaccine hesitancy and how the vaccine hesitancy caused by free riding behavior can be solved. Using 2,203 survey data sets from China, this paper examines the influence of the collective action dilemma - represented by free riding behavior - on COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy. The empirical results show that the existence of free riding behavior is an essential cause of vaccine hesitancy. Based on this conclusion, this paper discusses how to further alleviate the problem of vaccine hesitancy caused by collective action dilemmas by promoting cooperation. The findings of this paper may be helpful to promote various types of vaccines and further suggest that countries should assume the perspective of solving the collective action dilemma to achieve increased vaccination rates.

Citing Articles

A qualitative process evaluation of community-based participatory research and human-centered design in the 'Let's talk about vaccines' approach in Mozambique and Malawi.

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