Abstract
Vaccination is a social act, where benefits spill-over to third parties. How we approach such social decisions is influenced by whether likely beneficiaries share salient social identities with us. This study explores these dynamics using representative survey data from two contexts: national identity groups in Wales (N = 4187) and political partisans in America (N = 4864). In both cases, those in the minority in their local area were less likely to be vaccinated. In Wales, respondents who did not identify as Welsh were less likely to be vaccinated the greater the proportion of residents of their local area identified as Welsh. In America, the vaccination rate of Biden voters fell off more steeply than that of Trump voters as the proportion of Trump voters in their county increased. Results are robust to controlling for likely confounds and sensitivity analyses. In-group out-group dynamics help to shape important health decisions.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 117022 |
| Journal | Social Science and Medicine |
| Volume | 352 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Jul 2024 |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© 2024 The Authors
Funding
This work was supported by the British Academy under their COVID-19 Recovery: building future pandemic preparedness and understanding citizen engagement in the USA and UK scheme, grant ID: CRUSA210021, for which we are very grateful. We are also very grateful to YouGov and Response:ai for survey fieldwork, and, of course, to our participants. Thanks also, to two anonymous peer reviewers, for your thoughtful comments.
| Funders | Funder number |
|---|---|
| Economic and Social Research Council | ES/S012435/1 |
| British Academy | CRUSA210021 |
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Health(social science)
- History and Philosophy of Science
