Communicate risks of not getting Covid vaccine to boost uptake, study suggests | Vaccines and immunisation

Policymakers who want to encourage the uptake of Covid vaccines should focus on communicating the risks of not having such jabs, research suggests.

Researchers in China say they have found the approach, known as a loss frame strategy, is more persuasive in boosting people’s willingness to get vaccinated than focusing on the benefits either to the individual themselves or to others.

That, the team say, could be because focusing on gains tends to be beneficial when people think a certain behaviour is safe.

“Vaccines may be considered risky, given their potential side-effects, despite their preventive characteristics,” they write. “Therefore, the loss frame strategy has advantages over gain frames in promoting vaccination.”

Writing in the Journal of Public Health, the researchers report how they randomly split 1,085 participants into four groups of similar size. Participants were all 18 or over, and had not yet received all of their Covid jabs.

All participants were given information about the prevalence and mortality rate of Covid. However, while one group was given no further information, the others were given extra messaging, either explaining the individual benefits of vaccination, the benefits to others, or the risks from not getting vaccinated.

The participants were asked to rate, on a five-point scale, whether they thought vaccination was effective in preventing people from contracting Covid, and their willingness to be vaccinated, also on a five-point scale.

The results revealed that, overall, a greater perception of vaccination effectiveness was associated with a greater willingness to get vaccinated. The team also found groups that had received additional messaging were more willing to be vaccinated than the group that had not.

However, the greatest willingness was seen among the participants who were told about the possible harms of not having a Covid jab, such as being more likely to develop severe Covid symptoms. Indeed, compared with the group given no extra messaging, participants in this group were 2.79 times more willing to get vaccinated.

A further analysis suggested the three types of additional messaging could boost the positive association between perceived vaccine effectiveness and willingness to be vaccinated.

Dr Simon Williams, a behavioural scientist and public health researcher at Swansea University, said the results chimed with other studies showing that the perceived effectiveness of a vaccine affected how willing people were to take it. He said that was very relevant for Covid vaccines, given many countries were facing challenges in communicating that boosters were still effective, and important for certain groups.

But, he said, while the new work suggested framing vaccine messages in terms of what you stood to lose by not getting vaccinated was more effective than framing them in terms of possible gains, it was not clear if the same results would be found in other countries. Some research had come to different conclusions.

“A number of studies have found that loss messages tend to work better for disease ‘detection’ messages, like ‘get screened’ to catch disease early,” he said. “Whereas ‘gain’ messages work better for prevention behaviours, like ‘get vaccinated’ or ‘eat healthy’ to avoid disease.”