IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/socmed/v165y2016icp187-195.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

What is herd immunity, and how does it relate to pediatric vaccination uptake? US parent perspectives

Author

Listed:
  • Sobo, Elisa J.

Abstract

In light of current concern over pediatric immunization rates, 53 US parents with at least one child kindergarten age or younger were surveyed and interviewed regarding vaccine decision making. Data were collected in 2014 in San Diego, California. Herd immunity was not a salient issue: only six (11.3%) referenced the term or concept spontaneously; others had to be prompted. Parents familiar with herd immunity (70%) variously saw it as not just unnecessary but unproven, illogical, unrealistic, and unreliable. For instance, parents questioned its attainability because many adults do not immunize themselves. Some understood the concept negatively, as an instance of “herd mentality.” Further, having knowledge of herd immunity that public health experts would deem ‘correct’ did not lead to full vaccination. Implications of findings for understanding how the public makes use of scientific information, the potential role of public health messaging regarding altruism and ‘free-riding,’ and assumptions that vaccine-cautious parents would willfully take advantage of herd immunity are explored in relation to parent role expectations and American individualism.

Suggested Citation

  • Sobo, Elisa J., 2016. "What is herd immunity, and how does it relate to pediatric vaccination uptake? US parent perspectives," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 165(C), pages 187-195.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:165:y:2016:i:c:p:187-195
    DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2016.06.015
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277953616302969
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.socscimed.2016.06.015?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Hendrix, K.S. & Sturm, L.A. & Zimet, G.D. & Meslin, E.M., 2016. "Ethics and childhood vaccination policy in the United States," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 106(2), pages 273-278.
    2. Degeling, Chris & Carter, Stacy M. & Rychetnik, Lucie, 2015. "Which public and why deliberate? – A scoping review of public deliberation in public health and health policy research," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 131(C), pages 114-121.
    3. Hershey, John C. & Asch, David A. & Thumasathit, Thi & Meszaros, Jacqueline & Waters, Victor V., 1994. "The Roles of Altruism, Free Riding, and Bandwagoning in Vaccination Decisions," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 59(2), pages 177-187, August.
    4. Wang, E. & Clymer, J. & Davis-Hayes, C. & Buttenheim, A., 2014. "Nonmedical exemptions from school immunization requirements: A systematic review," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 104(11), pages 62-84.
    5. Julie Leask, 2011. "Target the fence-sitters," Nature, Nature, vol. 473(7348), pages 443-445, May.
    6. Skea, Zoë C. & Entwistle, Vikki A. & Watt, Ian & Russell, Elizabeth, 2008. "'Avoiding harm to others' considerations in relation to parental measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccination discussions - An analysis of an online chat forum," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 67(9), pages 1382-1390, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Viju Raghupathi & Jie Ren & Wullianallur Raghupathi, 2020. "Studying Public Perception about Vaccination: A Sentiment Analysis of Tweets," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 17(10), pages 1-23, May.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Anderson, Kerri-Ann & Creanza, Nicole, 2023. "A cultural evolutionary model of the interaction between parental beliefs and behaviors, with applications to vaccine hesitancy," Theoretical Population Biology, Elsevier, vol. 152(C), pages 23-38.
    2. Raman Kachurka & Michał W. Krawczyk & Joanna Rachubik, 2021. "Persuasive messages will not raise COVID-19 vaccine acceptance. Evidence from a nation-wide online experiment," Working Papers 2021-07, Faculty of Economic Sciences, University of Warsaw.
    3. Falco, Paolo & Zaccagni, Sarah, 2020. "Promoting social distancing in a pandemic: Beyond the good intentions," OSF Preprints a2nys, Center for Open Science.
    4. repec:cup:judgdm:v:9:y:2014:i:4:p:316-334 is not listed on IDEAS
    5. Shahzeen Z. Attari & David H. Krantz & Elke U. Weber, 2014. "Reasons for cooperation and defection in real-world social dilemmas," Judgment and Decision Making, Society for Judgment and Decision Making, vol. 9(4), pages 316-334, July.
    6. Agranov, Marina & Elliott, Matt & Ortoleva, Pietro, 2021. "The importance of Social Norms against Strategic Effects: The case of Covid-19 vaccine uptake," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 206(C).
    7. Katrina Brown & Nick Sevdalis, 2011. "Lay Vaccination Narratives on the Web," Medical Decision Making, , vol. 31(5), pages 707-709, September.
    8. Janice Y. Jung & Barbara A. Mellers, 2016. "American attitudes toward nudges," Judgment and Decision Making, Society for Judgment and Decision Making, vol. 11(1), pages 62-74, January.
    9. Rossen, Isabel & Hurlstone, Mark J. & Dunlop, Patrick D. & Lawrence, Carmen, 2019. "Accepters, fence sitters, or rejecters: Moral profiles of vaccination attitudes," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 224(C), pages 23-27.
    10. Degeling, Chris & Rychetnik, Lucie & Street, Jackie & Thomas, Rae & Carter, Stacy M., 2017. "Influencing health policy through public deliberation: Lessons learned from two decades of Citizens'/community juries," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 179(C), pages 166-171.
    11. Carpiano, Richard M. & Fitz, Nicholas S., 2017. "Public attitudes toward child undervaccination: A randomized experiment on evaluations, stigmatizing orientations, and support for policies," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 185(C), pages 127-136.
    12. Jiménez, Ángel V. & Stubbersfield, Joseph M. & Tehrani, Jamshid J., 2018. "An experimental investigation into the transmission of antivax attitudes using a fictional health controversy," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 215(C), pages 23-27.
    13. Mark Fabian & Anna Alexandrova & Yamini Cinamon Nair, 2023. "Coproducing Wellbeing Policy: A Theory of Thriving in Financial Hardship," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 24(7), pages 2309-2330, October.
    14. Louise K Wiles & Debra Kay & Julie A Luker & Anthea Worley & Jane Austin & Allan Ball & Alan Bevan & Michael Cousins & Sarah Dalton & Ellie Hodges & Lidia Horvat & Ellen Kerrins & Julie Marker & Miche, 2022. "Consumer engagement in health care policy, research and services: A systematic review and meta-analysis of methods and effects," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 17(1), pages 1-26, January.
    15. Campos-Mercade, Pol & Meier, Armando N. & Schneider, Florian H. & Wengström, Erik, 2021. "Prosociality predicts health behaviors during the COVID-19 pandemic," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 195(C).
    16. William F. Vásquez & Jennifer M. Trudeau, 2022. "Willingness to give amid pandemics: a contingent valuation of anticipated nongovernmental immunization programs," International Journal of Health Economics and Management, Springer, vol. 22(1), pages 53-68, March.
    17. Matan J. Cohen & Mayer Brezis & Colin Block & Adele Diederich & David Chinitz, 2013. "Vaccination, Herd Behavior, and Herd Immunity," Medical Decision Making, , vol. 33(8), pages 1026-1038, November.
    18. Dale, Elina & Evans, David B. & Gopinathan, Unni & Kurowski, Christoph & Norheim, Ole F. & Ottersen, Trygve & Voorhoeve, Alex, 2023. "Open and inclusive: fair processes for financing universal health coverage," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 119795, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    19. Katarzyna T. Bolsewicz & Maryke S. Steffens & Bianca Bullivant & Catherine King & Frank Beard, 2021. "“To Protect Myself, My Friends, Family, Workmates and Patients …and to Play My Part”: COVID-19 Vaccination Perceptions among Health and Aged Care Workers in New South Wales, Australia," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(17), pages 1-13, August.
    20. Alex Moehring & Avinash Collis & Kiran Garimella & M. Amin Rahimian & Sinan Aral & Dean Eckles, 2023. "Providing normative information increases intentions to accept a COVID-19 vaccine," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 14(1), pages 1-10, December.
    21. MacFarlane, Douglas & Hurlstone, Mark J. & Ecker, Ullrich K.H., 2020. "Protecting consumers from fraudulent health claims: A taxonomy of psychological drivers, interventions, barriers, and treatments," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 259(C).

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:165:y:2016:i:c:p:187-195. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/315/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.