Incentives can spur COVID-19 vaccination uptake

Abstract

Recent evidence suggests that vaccination hesitancy is too high in many countries to sustainably contain COVID-19. Using a factorial survey experiment administered to 20,500 online respondents in Germany, we assess the effectiveness of three strategies to increase vaccine uptake, namely, providing freedoms, financial remuneration, and vaccination at local doctors. Our results suggest that all three strategies can increase vaccination uptake on the order of two to three percentage points (PP) overall and five PP among the undecided. The combined effects could be as high as 13 PP for this group. The returns from different strategies vary across age groups, however, with older cohorts more responsive to local access and younger cohorts most responsive to enhanced freedoms for vaccinated citizens.

Keywords: COVID-19; herd immunity; hesitancy; incentives; vaccination.

Fig. 1.

(A) Effects of mass vaccination scenario attributes on the probability that respondents take the vaccine in the scenario. Dots with vertical lines indicate point estimates with robust 95% CIs from least squares regression, accounting for individual-level fixed effects. (B) Predicted shares of population that would be vaccinated under different incentives.

Fig. 2.

Heterogeneous treatment effects. (A) Features that account for heterogeneity in treatment effects. Dots indicate the coefficient for the best linear projections of covariates on effect heterogeneity, with positive (negative) numbers indicating that average effects are more positive at higher (lower) values of the covariate. The 95% CIs are indicated with horizontal lines. (B) Treatment effects depending on the age of respondents. Shown are heterogeneous treatment effects for each factor for undecided citizens. (C) Treatment effects depending on the distance to the closest vaccination center. Distances are calculated as minimum between centroid of respondent zip code and closest vaccination center. Source for distance is: https://overpass-turbo.eu/s/10TL, downloaded 29 July 2021.