WHY SOME HESITATE MORE: CROSS-CULTURAL VARIATION IN CONSPIRACY BELIEFS, BELIEF IN SCIENCE, AND VACCINE ATTITUDES

  1. Gul Deniz Salali
  2. Mete Sefa Uysal

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Abstract

Background

Countries differ in their levels of vaccine hesitancy (a delay in acceptance or refusal of vaccines), trust in vaccines, and acceptance of new vaccines. In this paper, we examine the factors contributing to the cross-cultural variation in vaccine attitudes, measured by levels of 1) general vaccine hesitancy, 2) trust in vaccines, and 3) COVID-19 vaccine acceptance.

Methods

We examined the relative effect of conspiracy mentality, belief in COVID-19 conspiracies, and belief in science on the above-mentioned vaccine attitudes in the UK (n= 1533), US (n= 1550), and Turkey (n= 1567) through a quota-sampled online survey to match the population for age, gender, ethnicity, and education level.

Results

We found that belief in COVID-19 conspiracies and conspiracy mentality were the strongest predictors of general vaccine hesitancy across all three countries. Belief in science had the largest positive effect on general vaccine trust and COVID-19 vaccine acceptance. Although participants in Turkey demonstrated the lowest level of vaccine trust, their belief in science score was significantly higher than participants in the US, suggesting that belief in science cannot explain the cross-cultural variation in vaccine trust. The mean levels of conspiracy mentality and agreement with COVID-19 conspiracies were consistent with the country-level differences in general and COVID-19 vaccine attitudes. Demographic variables did not predict vaccine attitudes as much as belief in conspiracies and science.

Conclusions

Our findings suggest that cross-cultural variation in vaccine hesitancy, vaccine trust, and COVID-19 vaccine acceptance rates are mainly driven by differences in the prevalence of conspiratorial thinking across countries.

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  1. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2021.07.09.21260228: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    EthicsConsent: Informed consent was collected from all participants.
    IRB: The study was approved by the UCL Research Ethics Committee (ID: 13121/003).
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power AnalysisWe then conducted multiple linear regression analyses to examine the predictive power of each of the psychological and demographic variables on general vaccine hesitancy and vaccine trust in each country.

    Table 2: Resources

    No key resources detected.

    Results from OddPub: Thank you for sharing your code and data.

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    Results from scite Reference Check: We found no unreliable references.

    About SciScore

    SciScore is an automated tool that is designed to assist expert reviewers by finding and presenting formulaic information scattered throughout a paper in a standard, easy to digest format. SciScore checks for the presence and correctness of RRIDs (research resource identifiers), and for rigor criteria such as sex and investigator blinding. For details on the theoretical underpinning of rigor criteria and the tools shown here, including references cited, please follow this link.

  2. Version published to 10.1101/2021.07.09.21260228v1 on medRxiv