Diffusion and the Vaccine Public Education Campaign
Since the official rollout of COVID19 vaccine this Monday, research center has been surveying American public’s sentiment on the vaccine. So far, 71percent of the respondents said they would definitely get a vaccine, while 39 percent said they will see how it works on others before taking it themselves, and about a quarter don’t want to get vaccinated at all. Among the groups that were being surveyed, Black Americans appear to be the most hesitant group by race, along with one in four Republicans believing that there’s no need for the vaccine because COVID poses no serious threat (Stolberg, 2020). The Trump Administration just started rolling out an official campaign on vaccine public education to encourage more people to take the vaccine in order to achieve herd immunity, and the approach and success of this campaign depend heavily on the concept of diffusion and information cascade that were discussed in class.
The vaccine education campaign targets at groups with a relatively fluid threshold to adopt new changes. When people make decisions about whether to accept a new change, they usually evaluate the tradeoffs from both sides. In the case of the vaccine, people would want to see results from others first before considering it for themselves. In general, they would be more prone to be inoculated if most people around them have already taken the vaccine and seemed well afterwards. It’s more unlikely that people would accept a new vaccine being the first one among their friends. Therefore, the campaign sets its focus group on people in the movable middle: those who are hesitant to take the vaccine but can be persuaded to do so (Stolberg, 2020). This group is more easily persuaded with a lower threshold that they have to overcome to adopt a new change. The education campaign can bring new information to these people and increase their trust in the vaccine, therefore leading them to take it with fewer friends who have already done so comparing to pre-campaign.
It is also important to consider the clusters of people that the campaign is targeting at throughout the implementation process. According to surveys done by the Pew Research Center and the Kaiser Family Foundation, Republicans, rural, and Black Americans are among the most hesitant groups (Stolberg, 2020). While the campaign can bring changes more easily to people from other groups and even reach some from the hesitant clusters, because these clusters have higher cluster densities, it is very difficult to achieve an information cascade within these clusters and spread the adoption of vaccine throughout the majority of the population. In order to change the minds of people within these groups, more effort and campaign will need to be done, and maybe experts should consider targeting at the most central figures within the hesitant groups for their cooperation.
Another phenomenon that plays a crucial rule in the diffusion process is the relationship tie among people. People are more likely to listen and get inoculated if someone who they have a strong tie with, someone who they are really close with, also got inoculated. Weak ties won’t be as efficient as targeting at people who have strong ties. In order to improve the effectiveness of the public education campaign, experts need to target at people who others have strong ties with and those that play a more central role within a certain cluster. Only when the skepticism is dissolved within the hesitant clusters, would we be able to get more people to take the vaccine and achieve herd immunity.
Links:
- Trump Administration Plans a Rushed Effort to Encourage Americans to Be Vaccinated: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/13/us/politics/coronavirus-vaccine-education-campaign.html
- A new survey finds that about a quarter of Americans don’t want to get vaccinated: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2020/12/15/world/covid-19-coronavirus/a-new-survey-finds-that-about-a-quarter-of-americans-dont-want-to-get-vaccinated