IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/nas/journl/v118y2021pe2106559118.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Elite party cues increase vaccination intentions among Republicans

Author

Listed:
  • Sophia L. Pink

    (Department of Sociology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305)

  • James Chu

    (Department of Sociology, Columbia University, New York, NY 10027)

  • James N. Druckman

    (Department of Political Science, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208)

  • David G. Rand

    (Sloan School of Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139)

  • Robb Willer

    (Department of Sociology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305)

Abstract

Overcoming the COVID-19 pandemic requires motivating the vast majority of Americans to get vaccinated. However, vaccination rates have become politically polarized, and a substantial proportion of Republicans have remained vaccine hesitant for months. Here, we explore how endorsements by party elites affect Republicans’ COVID-19 vaccination intentions and attitudes. In a preregistered survey experiment ( n = 1,480), we varied whether self-identified Republicans saw endorsements of the vaccine from prominent Republicans (including video of a speech by former President Donald Trump), from the Democratic Party (including video of a speech by President Joseph Biden), or a neutral control condition including no endorsements. Unvaccinated Republicans who were exposed to the Republican elite endorsement reported 7.0% higher vaccination intentions than those who viewed the Democratic elite endorsement and 5.7% higher than those in the neutral control condition. These effects were statistically mediated by participants’ reports of how much they thought Republican politicians would want them to get vaccinated. We also found evidence of backlash effects against Democratic elites: Republicans who viewed the Democratic elite endorsement reported they would be significantly less likely to encourage others to vaccinate and had more negative attitudes toward the vaccine, compared with those who viewed the Republican elite endorsement or the neutral control. These results demonstrate the relative advantage of cues from Republican elites—and the risks of messaging from Democrats currently in power—for promoting vaccination among the largest vaccine-hesitant subgroup in the United States.

Suggested Citation

  • Sophia L. Pink & James Chu & James N. Druckman & David G. Rand & Robb Willer, 2021. "Elite party cues increase vaccination intentions among Republicans," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 118(32), pages 2106559118-, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:nas:journl:v:118:y:2021:p:e2106559118
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.pnas.org/content/118/32/e2106559118.full
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Harsha Thirumurthy & Katherine L Milkman & Kevin G Volpp & Alison M Buttenheim & Devin G Pope, 2022. "Association between statewide financial incentive programs and COVID-19 vaccination rates," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 17(3), pages 1-7, March.
    2. Zhong, Wei & Broniatowski, David A., 2023. "Economic risk framing increases intention to vaccinate among Republican COVID-19 vaccine refusers," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 317(C).
    3. Clemens, Jeffrey & Hoxie, Philip & Kearns, John & Veuger, Stan, 2023. "How did federal aid to states and localities affect testing and vaccine delivery?," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 225(C).
    4. Facciani, Matthew & Lazić, Aleksandra & Viggiano, Gracemarie & McKay, Tara, 2023. "Political network composition predicts vaccination attitudes," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 328(C).
    5. Raman, Shyam & Kriner, Douglas & Ziebarth, Nicolas & Simon, Kosali & Kreps, Sarah, 2022. "COVID-19 booster uptake among US adults: Assessing the impact of vaccine attributes, incentives, and context in a choice-based experiment," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 310(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:nas:journl:v:118:y:2021:p:e2106559118. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Eric Cain (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.pnas.org/ .

    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.