RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Money is not everything: experimental evidence that payments do not increase willingness to be vaccinated against COVID-19
JF Journal of Medical Ethics
JO J Med Ethics
FD BMJ Publishing Group Ltd and Institute of Medical Ethics
SP 547
OP 548
DO 10.1136/medethics-2020-107122
VO 47
IS 8
A1 Philipp Sprengholz
A1 Sarah Eitze
A1 Lisa Felgendreff
A1 Lars Korn
A1 Cornelia Betsch
YR 2021
UL http://jme.bmj.com/content/47/8/547.abstract
AB Rapid, large-scale uptake of new vaccines against COVID-19 will be crucial to decrease infections and end the pandemic. In a recent article in this journal, Julian Savulescu argued in favour of monetary incentives to convince more people to be vaccinated once the vaccine becomes available. To evaluate the potential of his suggestion, we conducted an experiment investigating the impact of payments and the communication of individual and prosocial benefits of high vaccination rates on vaccination intentions. Our results revealed that none of these interventions or their combinations increased willingness to be vaccinated shortly after a vaccine becomes available. Consequently, decision makers should be cautious about introducing monetary incentives and instead focus on interventions that increase confidence in vaccine safety first, as this has shown to be an especially important factor regarding the demand for the new COVID-19 vaccines.Materials, data, and the data analysis script are available at https://osf.io/89eux/