The vaccination campaign against the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus infection continues in France. However, despite the recommendations of scientists, 8% of adults are still not vaccinated against Covid-19: according to a survey by Public Health France published in December 2021, the “non-vaccinated” are mainly women living in rural areas.
Obviously, there are also regional disparities: in the overseas territories, in Corsica and in the disadvantaged regions, the “non-vaccinated” are more numerous than elsewhere.
How do you convince an opponent of vaccination to get vaccinated? This is the question asked Harvard Business School researchers (in the USA). Scientists surveyed more than 6,000 people in the United States, European Union, United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand.
Use altruistic rather than personal arguments
During a first contact (in December 2020), they asked participants to rate their intention to be vaccinated against Covid-19 on a scale of 0 to 10; they then resumed contact with the volunteers during the summer of 2021. Surprise: among the individuals radically opposed to vaccination, a third were finally vaccinated 6 months later.
American researchers have therefore looked into the arguments that have convinced these “antivax”. They thus noticed that the public health argument (“by having yourself vaccinated, you contribute to protecting society”) had a certain effectiveness in the countries of the European Union; on the other hand, in the United States and the United Kingdom, the economic (“by getting vaccinated, you allow the economy to restart more quickly”) and personal arguments (“by getting vaccinated, you protect your loved ones against the virus”) were more effective.
“Overall, altruistic messages had the greatest effect” underline the researchers. Indeed, the argument of self-protection (“by getting vaccinated, you protect yourself effectively against the virus”) only worked in a very limited way… Good to know!
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