BACKGROUND: Vaccinations are an effective choice to stop disease outbreaks, including COVID-19. There is little research on individuals' COVID-19 vaccination decision-making.

OBJECTIVE: We aimed to determine individual preferences for COVID-19 vaccinations in China, and to assess the factors influencing vaccination decision-making to facilitate vaccination coverage.

METHODS: A D-efficient discrete choice experiment was conducted across six Chinese provinces selected by the stratified random sampling method. Vaccine choice sets were constructed using seven attributes: vaccine effectiveness, side-effects, accessibility, number of doses, vaccination sites, duration of vaccine protection, and proportion of acquaintances vaccinated. Conditional logit and latent class models were used to identify preferences.

RESULTS: Although all seven attributes were proved to significantly influence respondents' vaccination decision, vaccine effectiveness, side-effects and proportion of acquaintances vaccinated were the most important. We also found a higher probability of vaccinating when the vaccine was more effective; risks of serious side effects were small; vaccinations were free and voluntary; the fewer the number of doses; the longer the protection duration; and the higher the proportion of acquaintances vaccinated. Higher local vaccine coverage created altruistic herd incentives to vaccinate rather than free-rider problems. The predicted vaccination uptake of the optimal vaccination scenario in our study was 84.77%. Preference heterogeneity was substantial. Individuals who were older, had a lower education level, lower income, higher trust in the vaccine and higher perceived risk of infection, displayed a higher probability to vaccinate.

CONCLUSIONS: Preference heterogeneity among individuals should lead health authorities to address the diversity of expectations about COVID-19 vaccinations. To maximize COVID-19 vaccine uptake, health authorities should promote vaccine effectiveness; pro-actively communicate the absence or presence of vaccine side effects; and ensure rapid and wide media communication about local vaccine coverage.

Keywords: COVID-19; Health policy; Preference; Vaccine

Vaccine

DOI: 10.1016/j.vaccine.2020.12.009

2020-Dec-05 (Epub 2020 Dec 05)

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