Social capital and vaccine decision-making: A scoping review

The term social capital has been widely used in social science to explain how relationships, norms, and shared resources shape opportunities within communities. This concept has gained recent prominence in public health research as scholars seek to understand the social dynamics underlying vaccine decision-making and hesitancy. Guided by major theoretical perspectives of Bourdieu, Coleman, and Putnam, this paper examines how social capital has been applied to the study of vaccine uptake and synthesizes research findings about its influence on vaccination behaviours. Sources (n = 581) were gathered from the databases Medline, Embase, CINAHL, and Web of Science and uploaded to Covidence. Following removal of duplicates (n = 124), the titles and abstracts of 457 sources were screened for inclusion of the search concepts “vaccination” and “social capital”. Full texts of 67 sources were screened for relevant use of search concepts (i.e., study focus on vaccination behaviours and use of “social capital” as an underpinning theory), resulting in 34 articles for final inclusion. Studies were coded for their theoretical grounding, methodology, and the specific forms of capital examined. Findings indicate that social capital shapes vaccine decision-making in complex and context-dependent ways. While higher levels of trust, cohesion, or civic participation are often associated with vaccine uptake, strong bonding ties and community-embedded norms sometimes facilitate the spread of misinformation and reinforce hesitancy. Overall, the review demonstrates that social capital can function as both a facilitator and barrier to vaccination, underscoring the importance of local context and the need for nuanced, theory-informed approaches to understanding vaccine behaviours.