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Herd immunity and a vaccination game: An experimental study

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  • Wooyoung Lim
  • Pengfei Zhang

Abstract

Would the affected communities voluntarily obtain herd immunity if a cure for COVID-19 was available? This paper experimentally investigates people’s vaccination choices in the context of a nonlinear public good game. A “vaccination game” is defined in which costly commitments (vaccination) are required of a fraction of the population to reach the critical level needed for herd immunity, without which defectors are punished by the natural contagion of epidemics. Our experimental implementation of a vaccination game in a controlled laboratory setting reveals that endogenous epidemic punishment is a credible threat, resulting in voluntary vaccination to obtain herd immunity, for which the orthodox principle of positive externalities fails to account. The concave nature of the infection probability plays a key role in facilitating the elimination of an epidemic.

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  • Wooyoung Lim & Pengfei Zhang, 2020. "Herd immunity and a vaccination game: An experimental study," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(5), pages 1-16, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0232652
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0232652
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    RePEc Biblio mentions

    As found on the RePEc Biblio, the curated bibliography for Economics:
    1. > Economics of Welfare > Health Economics > Economics of Pandemics > Specific pandemics > Covid-19 > Health > Immunization
    2. > Economics of Welfare > Health Economics > Economics of Pandemics > Specific pandemics > Covid-19 > Health > Immunization
    3. > Economics of Welfare > Health Economics > Economics of Pandemics > Specific pandemics > Covid-19 > Health > Herd immunity

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    2. Ullah, Mohammad Sharif & Higazy, M. & Kabir, K.M. Ariful, 2022. "Dynamic analysis of mean-field and fractional-order epidemic vaccination strategies by evolutionary game approach," Chaos, Solitons & Fractals, Elsevier, vol. 162(C).
    3. Justin Schonfeld & Edward Qian & Jason Sinn & Jeffrey Cheng & Madhur Anand & Chris T. Bauch, 2021. "Debates about vaccines and climate change on social media networks: a study in contrasts," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 8(1), pages 1-10, December.
    4. Kejriwal, Saransh & Sheth, Sarjan & Silpa, P.S. & Sarkar, Sumit & Guha, Apratim, 2022. "Attaining herd immunity to a new infectious disease through multi-stage policies incentivising voluntary vaccination," Chaos, Solitons & Fractals, Elsevier, vol. 154(C).
    5. Hess, Stephane & Lancsar, Emily & Mariel, Petr & Meyerhoff, Jürgen & Song, Fangqing & van den Broek-Altenburg, Eline & Alaba, Olufunke A. & Amaris, Gloria & Arellana, Julián & Basso, Leonardo J. & Ben, 2022. "The path towards herd immunity: Predicting COVID-19 vaccination uptake through results from a stated choice study across six continents," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 298(C).
    6. Mühlhoff, Katharina, 2022. "Convincing the “Herd” of immunity: Lessons from smallpox vaccination in 19th century Germany," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 47(C).
    7. Galdikiene, Laura & Jaraite, Jurate & Kajackaite, Agne, 2022. "Trust and vaccination intentions: Evidence from Lithuania during the COVID-19 pandemic," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 17(11), pages 1-1.
    8. Patrick Mellacher, 2020. "Cooperation in the Age of COVID-19: Evidence from Public Goods Games," Papers 2011.09189, arXiv.org.
    9. Kabir, K.M. Ariful, 2021. "How evolutionary game could solve the human vaccine dilemma," Chaos, Solitons & Fractals, Elsevier, vol. 152(C).
    10. Ginzburg, Boris & Guerra, José-Alberto & Lekfuangfu, Warn N., 2023. "Critical Mass in Collective Action," MPRA Paper 117139, University Library of Munich, Germany.

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