Your Belief Matters: Explaining Vaccine Hesitancy from Religious Norms

Religious factors often play an important role in predicting health-related behaviour in Indonesia, including vaccination attitudes. However, limited studies have explored the intergroup and intragroup processes when discussing vaccine hesitancy. This study investigates ingroup and outgroup norms and vaccine hesitation by controlling conspiracy beliefs and fatalism. To address research questions, the online quasi-experimental method was applied. This study involved stimuli consisting of hypothetical information about the intention of vaccination based on the participants’ reference group. We randomly assigned participants to test whether the manipulation could influence vaccine hesitancy. Multiple linear regressions were performed for data analysis in two models. We also conducted model comparison and marginal mean analysis to see the interaction effect. As a result, we did not find the relationship of predictor variables; group, manipulation, its interaction, and fatalism. In contrast, conspiracy beliefs revealed a consistently significant association with vaccine hesitancy (β = .14, p < .001; CI = [.09 - .20]). The authors believe that several reasons affect the study result, including lack of time and sample size, less geographical representativeness, and technical issues. Hence, this research has implications for COVID-19 vaccine discussion regarding the experimental approach to understanding the social context. Findings suggests that gaining an ideal sample size to detect the smallest effect size and involved population in rural areas is essential. Further, technical issues to maintain internal evaluation should be provided in the experiment, like using manipulation checks and giving guidelines for questionnaire completion.Keywords: Vaccine Hesitancy, Ingroup, Outgroup, Conspiracy Beliefs, Fatalism