Cited by 98Vaccine Coverage and HesitancyOpinion Dynamics and Social InfluenceCOVID-19 epidemiological studies

Overcoming COVID-19 vaccination resistance when alternative policies affect the dynamics of conformism, social norms, and crowding out

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Schmelz, Katrin, Bowles, Samuel·2021·Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

Abstract

Significance: We provide a model of policy effectiveness to explore the dynamics of vaccine resistance, drawing on our panel data set. The key ideas motivating the model are that voluntary citizen compliance is essential to policy success even under enforcement and that compliance preferences are endogenous, possibly crowded out by enforcement or enhanced due to conformism as more other citizens comply. Our panel data tracks intraindividual changes in trust in public institutions and vaccine acceptance, allowing inferences about causal effects. Our contribution is the integration of three features: 1) a model of interaction of public policy and citizen preferences, 2) using appropriate data, and 3) allowing insights on how to address the COVID-19 pandemic and other important societal challenges.

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Crossref · 10.1073/pnas.2104912118

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  • Negative reciprocity can be switched to positive reciprocity given sufficient cooperation levels.

    “Our novel alternative to punishment builds on the reciprocal nature of the trust—the fact that people reciprocate voluntary trust68—as well as the conditional nature of human cooperation—the fact that negative reciprocity can be switched to positive reciprocity given sufficient cooperation levels44,69–71.”

    From Cooperation without punishment (2023) · cites this paper as [71]

    The Results section says that people in public-goods experiments may cooperate conditionally, contributing only if others do, and its vaccination model describes a tipping point after which more people prefer vaccination. These passages support cooperation or uptake increasing in response to others’ actions, but they do not establish that negative reciprocity switches to positive reciprocity at a sufficient level of cooperation. No page numbers are available in our copy. (LLM, conf=0.82)

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4 of the 59 references couldn’t be matched to a known paper.

Research works printed but not linked: 1

  1. [30]H. Aaron, Public policy, values, and consciousness. J. Econ. Perspect. 8, 3– 21 (1994). 10136764

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Authors
Schmelz, K., & Bowles, S.
Affiliations
  • University of Konstanz (DE)
  • Santa Fe Institute (US)
Corresponding author
Schmelz, Katrin
Venue
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Published
2021-06-07
Volume
118
Issue
25
ISSN
  • 0027-8424 (ISSN-L)
  • 1091-6490
OpenAlex
W3168227353
Cited by
98
References
59
Citations by year
2026: 5 · 2025: 10 · 2024: 18 · 2023: 25 · 2022: 29 · 2021: 11
FWCI
11.45
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • KOPS (University of Konstanz) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
  • RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
Funders
  • Santa Fe Institute
  • Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (390681379, EXC 2035/1)
  • Universität Konstanz
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Health › Vaccine Coverage and Hesitancy
  • Physical Sciences › Physics and Astronomy › Statistical and Nonlinear Physics › Opinion Dynamics and Social Influence
  • Physical Sciences › Mathematics › Modeling and Simulation › COVID-19 epidemiological studies
Keywords
COVID-19 vaccination, vaccine hesitancy, vaccine acceptance, mandatory vaccination, voluntary vaccination, social norms, conformity, crowding out, public trust in government, herd immunity, policy effectiveness
MeSH terms
COVID-19, COVID-19 Vaccines, Crowding, Health Policy, Humans, Motivation, Social Conformity, Vaccination, Models, Immunological, Social Norms

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