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An examination of the interplay of message framing and vaccine safety information sources on COVID-19 vaccination promotion

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Abstract

Through a between-subjects, 2 [message framing: gain versus loss] × 2 [vaccine safety information sources: official authorities versus vaccinated laypeople] full factorial survey experiment, this study examined how individuals’ intentions to get COVID-19 vaccine were influenced by the framing of health campaign messages and vaccine safety information sources. In this study, 304 participants were randomly assigned to four experimental conditions. The results revealed that there was no overall significant difference between gain and loss framed messages in vaccination promotion. However, the relative persuasiveness of gain and loss framed messages differed when vaccination safety information was provided by different sources, as gain-framed messages were more persuasive when information about vaccine safety information was provided by the official authority, while loss-framed messages worked better when vaccine safety information was offered by vaccinated laypeople. Theoretical and practical implications of the findings for vaccine health communication were discussed.

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Data availability

The datasets analyzed in the current study are not publicly available due to restriction of research foundation but are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Notes

  1. To rule out any potential bias caused by COVID-19 vaccination program, the survey experiment was executed in the early stage of vaccination program in February, 2021 when most students in the university had not yet got the vaccine.

  2. The reverse wording attention check question was included in our scale-based questionnaire to filter out invalid respondents, which yielded a final sample of 304 respondents. Specifically, the original question was in a positive voice asking the respondents to rate their agreement with the statement “I’ll try to get COVID-19 vaccine”, and then another question with reverse wording in a negative voice was asked regarding respondents’ agreement with the statement “I’ll not try to get COVID-19 vaccine” on the same 7-point Likert scale (1 = strongly disagreement, 7 = strongly agreement). If respondents pay attention to each question, they will provide logically consistent answers to these two questions. Thus we filtered out invalid respondents who failed to have the same answer for these two reverse wording attention check questions.

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge for the support from the National Social Science Fund of China [Grant number 19CXW018].

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Journalism and Communication, Shandong University, Jinan, China

    Xiaodong Yang

  2. School of Journalism and Communication, Wuhan University, Wuhan, China

    Yimeng Xu

  3. Faculty of Humanities and Arts, Macau University of Science and Technology, Macau, SAR, China

    Yu Guo

  4. School of Journalism and Communication, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China

    Yunsong Li

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Correspondence to Yu Guo.

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We declare that the submitted work is original and ethically approved by school of Journalism and Communication at Shandong University. Informed consent was obtained from all participants included in the study. The confidentiality and privacy of participants is well protected. The work is financially supported by the National Social Science Fund of China [Grant number 19CXW018].

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Appendix

Appendix

Questionnaire: public intentions to get COVID-19 vaccine

We are currently conducted an academic study on public health. We sincerely hope that you can spend 3–5 min to participate in this survey. Your answers to the survey will be utilized for academic research, with absolutely no disclosure of personal information or exploitation for any commercial purposes.

We encourage you to complete the questionnaire based on your genuine thoughts. There are no right or wrong answers.

If you have any suggestions or questions regarding this survey, please contact xxx@xxx.com. Thank you for your participation and support!

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Yang, X., Xu, Y., Guo, Y. et al. An examination of the interplay of message framing and vaccine safety information sources on COVID-19 vaccination promotion. Curr Psychol 43, 17714–17726 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-023-05130-x

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