Vaccine hesitancy and (fake) news: Quasi‐experimental evidence from Italy
Open accessAbstract
The spread of fake news and misinformation on social media is blamed as a primary cause of vaccine hesitancy, which is one of the major threats to global health, according to the World Health Organization. This paper studies the effect of the diffusion of misinformation on immunization rates in Italy by exploiting a quasi‐experiment that occurred in 2012, when the Court of Rimini officially recognized a causal link between the measles‐mumps‐rubella vaccine and autism and awarded injury compensation. To this end, we exploit the virality of misinformation following the 2012 Italian court's ruling, along with the intensity of exposure to nontraditional media driven by regional infrastructural differences in Internet broadband coverage. Using a Difference‐in‐Differences regression on regional panel data, we show that the spread of this news resulted in a decrease in child immunization rates for all types of vaccines.
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During the COVID-19 pandemic, digital media use was reported to be negatively associated with trust in vaccines.
“During the COVID-19 pandemic, digital media use was reported to be negatively associated with trust in vaccines85,86.”
From A systematic review of worldwide causal and correlational evidence on digital media and democracy (2022) · cites this paper as [85]
The Conclusions report that greater access to nontraditional media through broadband coverage was associated with lower child immunization rates in Italy after a 2012 court ruling. The Methods and Data section identifies the study period as 2006–2016. The paper does not report digital media use or trust in vaccines during the COVID-19 pandemic. (LLM, conf=0.87)
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How Much Should We Trust Differences-in-Differences Estimates?
Bertrand, M., Duflo, E., & Mullainathan, S. (2004) · The Quarterly Journal of Economics · doi:10.1162/003355304772839588 · Cited by 10,641 · see citing works
The Effects of Anti-Vaccine Conspiracy Theories on Vaccination Intentions
Jolley, D., & Douglas, K. M. (2014) · PLoS ONE · doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0089177 · Cited by 1,232 · cited 1× · see citing works
“The spread of fake news and misinformation on social media is blamed as a primary cause of vaccine hesitancy (Aquino et al., 2017; Dube, Vivion, & MacDonald, 2015; Jolley & Douglas, 2014; Smith & Marshall, 2010).”
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A systematic review of worldwide causal and correlational evidence on digital media and democracy
Lorenz-Spreen, P., Oswald, L., Lewandowsky, S., & Hertwig, R. (2022) · Nature Human Behaviour · doi:10.1038/s41562-022-01460-1 · Cited by 348 · see citing works
- Authors
- Carrieri, V., Madio, L., & Principe, F.
- Affiliations
- RWI – Leibniz Institute for Economic Research (DE)
- University of York (GB)
- Erasmus University Rotterdam (NL)
- Corresponding author
- Principe, Francesco
- Venue
- Health Economics
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Published
- 2019-08-20
- Volume
- 28
- Issue
- 11
- Pages
- 1377-1382
- ISSN
- 1057-9230 (ISSN-L)
- 1099-1050
- PMC
- PMC6851894
- OpenAlex
- W2918535881
- Cited by
- 235
- References
- 2
- Citations by year
- 2026: 8 · 2025: 23 · 2024: 34 · 2023: 40 · 2022: 57 · 2021: 52 · 2020: 20 · 2019: 1
- FWCI
- 31.70
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Health Economics (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- EUR Research Repository (Erasmus University Rotterdam) (publishedVersion, other-oa)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- EUR Research Repository (Erasmus University Rotterdam) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- RePub (Erasmus University Rotterdam) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- Aisberg (University of Bergamo) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- Digital Access to Libraries (Université catholique de Louvain (UCL), l'Université de Namur (UNamur) and the Université Saint-Louis (USL-B)) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- Padua Research Archive (University of Padova) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Health › Vaccine Coverage and Hesitancy
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Misinformation and Its Impacts
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Epidemiology › Data-Driven Disease Surveillance
- Keywords
- vaccine hesitancy, misinformation, fake news, MMR vaccine, autism spectrum disorder, judicial decisions, personal injury compensation, vaccination coverage, childhood immunization, social media, broadband coverage, regional variation, Italy
- MeSH terms
- Vaccination Coverage, Child, Communication, Humans, Italy, Patient Acceptance of Health Care, Vaccines, Diphtheria-Tetanus-Pertussis Vaccine, Measles-Mumps-Rubella Vaccine, Poliovirus Vaccines, Social Media
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