Assessing Public Policies to Facilitate COVID-19 Vaccination in Partisan America

• In Event: Public Policy and the Response to COVID-19

Abstract

As several COVID-19 vaccines were rolled out in early 2021, governments at all levels in the U.S. faced significant difficulty in consistently and efficiently administering the injections. One of the obstacles was the prevalent vaccine hesitancy within the U.S. public. State and local governments considered policies and programs in an attempt to mitigate the hesitancy concerns among the public. In this paper, we leverage an original conjoint experiment fielded in early 2021 to a national sample in order to examine how different programs (such as employer mandates, state-organized or health care provider-organized vaccination clinics, financial compensation initiatives) or administration of the vaccine candidates (such as the vaccine type, the number of doses required for full vaccination, and the percentage of the U.S. population already vaccinated) affect the likelihood of the public agreeing to get vaccinated. We also evaluate these differing public policies among various partisan factions in light of recent partisan divergence in self-reported willingness to be vaccinated. These results are important, not only to address how policy interventions can best help to alleviate the current pandemic in the general public and among partisans, but also provide insight in to how general vaccine hesitancy can be resolved with public health policies.

Authors

• Daniel J. Simmons, Saint Michael's College

• Carlos Algara, Claremont Graduate University