COVID-19 vaccine acceptance: A comparative longitudinal analysis of the association between risk perception, confidence, and the acceptance of a COVID-19 vaccine.

Following the outbreak of COVID-19, scientists rushed to develop vaccines to protect individuals and ferry the world out of the pandemic. Unfortunately, vaccine hesitancy is a major threat to the success of vaccination campaigns. Research on previous pandemics highlighted the centrality of perceived risk and confidence as core determinants of vaccine acceptance. Research on COVID-19 is less conclusive, and frequently it relies on one-country, cross-sectional data, thus making it hard to generalize results across contexts and observe these relationships over time. To bridge these gaps, in this article, we analyzed the association between perceived risk, confidence, and vaccine acceptance cross-sectionally at individual and country levels. Then, we longitudinally explored whether a within-country variation in perceived risk and confidence was correlated with a variation in vaccine acceptance. We used data from a large-scale survey of individuals in 23 countries and 19 time-points between June 2020 and March 2021 and comparative longitudinal multilevel models to estimate the associations at different levels of analysis simultaneously. Results show the existence of cross-sectional relationships at the individual and country levels but no significant associations within countries over time. This article contributes to our understanding of the roles of risk perception and confidence in COVID-19 vaccines' acceptance by underlining that these relationships might differ at diverse levels of analysis. To foster vaccine uptake, it might be important to address individual concerns and persisting contextual characteristics, but increasing levels of perceived risk and confidence might not be a sufficient strategy to increase vaccine acceptance rates.

How should COVID-19 vaccines be distributed between the Global North and South: a discrete choice experiment in six European countries.

Background: The global distribution of COVID-19 vaccinations remains highly unequal. We examine public preferences in six European countries regarding the allocation of COVID-19 vaccines between the Global South and Global North. Methods: We conducted online discrete choice experiments with adult participants in France (n=766), Germany (n=1964), Italy (n=767), Poland (n=670), Spain (n=925), and Sweden (n=938). Respondents were asked to decide which one of two candidates should receive the vaccine first. The candidates varied on four attributes: age, mortality risk, employment, and living in a low- or high-income country. We analysed the relevance of each attribute in allocation decisions using conditional logit regressions. Results: In all six countries, respondents prioritised candidates with a high mortality and infection risk, irrespective of whether the candidate lived in the respondent's own country. All else equal, respondents in Italy, France, Spain, and Sweden gave priority to a candidate from a low-income country, whereas German respondents were significantly more likely to choose the candidate from their own country. Female, younger, and more educated respondents were more favourable to an equitable vaccine distribution. Conclusions: Given these preferences for global solidarity, European governments should promote vaccine transfers to poorer world regions. Funding: Funding was provided by the European Union's Horizon H2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement 101016233 (PERISCOPE).

Designing and implementing a research integrity promotion plan: Recommendations for research funders.

Various stakeholders in science have put research integrity high on their agenda. Among them, research funders are prominently placed to foster research integrity by requiring that the organizations and individual researchers they support make an explicit commitment to research integrity. Moreover, funders need to adopt appropriate research integrity practices themselves. To facilitate this, we recommend that funders develop and implement a Research Integrity Promotion Plan (RIPP). This Consensus View offers a range of examples of how funders are already promoting research integrity, distills 6 core topics that funders should cover in a RIPP, and provides guidelines on how to develop and implement a RIPP. We believe that the 6 core topics we put forward will guide funders towards strengthening research integrity policy in their organization and guide the researchers and research organizations they fund.

COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy in eight European countries: Prevalence, determinants, and heterogeneity.

We examine heterogeneity in COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy across eight European countries. We reveal striking differences across countries, ranging from 6.4% of adults in Spain to 61.8% in Bulgaria reporting being hesitant. We experimentally assess the effectiveness of different messages designed to reduce COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy. Receiving messages emphasizing either the medical benefits or the hedonistic benefits of vaccination significantly increases COVID-19 vaccination willingness in Germany, whereas highlighting privileges contingent on holding a vaccination certificate increases vaccination willingness in both Germany and the United Kingdom. No message has significant positive effects in any other country. Machine learning-based heterogeneity analyses reveal that treatment effects are smaller or even negative in settings marked by high conspiracy beliefs and low health literacy. In contrast, trust in government increases treatment effects in some groups. The heterogeneity in vaccine hesitancy and responses to different messages suggests that health authorities should avoid one-size-fits-all vaccination campaigns.

Restarting "Normal" Life after Covid-19 and the Lockdown: Evidence from Spain, the United Kingdom, and Italy.

In this article, we examine the expectations of the economic outlook, fear of the future, and behavioural change during the first Covid-19 wave, for three European countries (Spain, the United Kingdom, and Italy) that have been severely hit. We use a novel dataset that we collected to monitor the three countries during the crisis. As outcome variables, we used expectations (e.g., economic outlook, labour market situation, recovery), fear (e.g., scenario of new outburst, economic depression, restriction to individual rights and freedom), and behavioural change across the following dimensions: savings, cultural consumption, social capital, and risky behaviour. We provide descriptive evidence that is representative of the population of interest, and we estimate the impact of exposure to shock occurred during the crisis on the same outcome variables, using matching techniques. Our main findings are the following: we detected systematically negative expectations regarding the future and the recovery, majoritarian fears of an economic depression, a new outbreak, and a permanent restriction on freedom, a reduction in saving and in social capital. Exposure to shocks decreased expected job prospects, increased withdrawal from accumulated savings, and reduced contacts with the network relevant to job advancement, whereas it had inconclusive effects over fears. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11205-021-02697-5.

Negative shocks predict change in cognitive function and preferences: assessing the negative affect and stress hypothesis.

In the context of the current COVID-19 pandemic, households throughout the world have to cope with negative shocks. Previous research has shown that negative shocks impair cognitive function and change risk, time and social preferences. In this study, we analyze the results of a longitudinal multi-country survey conducted in Italy (N = 1652), Spain (N = 1660) and the United Kingdom (N = 1578). We measure cognitive function using the Cognitive Reflection Test and preferences traits (risk, time and social preferences) using an experimentally validated set of questions to assess the differences between people exposed to a shock compared to the rest of the sample. We measure four possible types of shocks: labor market shock, health shock, occurrence of stressful events, and mental health shock. Additionally, we randomly assign participants to groups with either a recall of negative events (more specifically, a mild reinforcement of stress or of fear/anxiety), or to a control group (to recall neutral or joyful memories), in order to assess whether or not stress and negative emotions drive a change in preferences. Results show that people affected by shocks performed worse in terms of cognitive functioning, are more risk loving, and are more prone to punish others (negative reciprocity). Data do not support the hypotheses that the result is driven by stress or by negative emotions.

Assessing concerns for the economic consequence of the COVID-19 response and mental health problems associated with economic vulnerability and negative economic shock in Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom.

Many different countries have been under lockdown or extreme social distancing measures to control the spread of COVID-19. The potentially far-reaching side effects of these measures have not yet been fully understood. In this study we analyse the results of a multi-country survey conducted in Italy (N = 3,504), Spain (N = 3,524) and the United Kingdom (N = 3,523), with two separate analyses. In the first analysis, we examine the elicitation of citizens' concerns over the downplaying of the economic consequences of the lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic. We control for Social Desirability Bias through a list experiment included in the survey. In the second analysis, we examine the data from the same survey to predict the level of stress, anxiety and depression associated with being economically vulnerable and having been affected by a negative economic shock. To accomplish this, we have used a prediction algorithm based on machine learning techniques. To quantify the size of this affected population, we compare its magnitude with the number of people affected by COVID-19 using measures of susceptibility, vulnerability and behavioural change collected in the same questionnaire. We find that the concern for the economy and for "the way out" of the lockdown is diffuse and there is evidence of minor underreporting. Additionally, we estimate that around 42.8% of the populations in the three countries are at high risk of stress, anxiety, and depression, based on their level of economic vulnerability and their exposure to a negative economic shock.

Representations of electronic cigarettes in Chinese media.

BACKGROUND: Electronic cigarettes (E-cigarettes) have become a debated issue for tobacco control over recent years. In this study we investigate how Chinese newspapers have covered E-cigarettes over the past ten years. METHODS: The study analyses the salience, patterns and content of news articles pertaining to E-cigarettes in regional and national Chinese outlets. A total of 476 articles are examined via content analysis and supervised automatic text analysis. The manual content analysis generates a coding scheme, which is then validated and applied to machine learning. The whole research methodology demonstrates satisfying human-human and human-to-computer reliabilities. RESULTS: The study reveals that E-cigarettes have not received enough attention in terms of its salience in the media, though the amount of coverage has been growing. A large share of the articles is published around May of each year - which is when the No Tobacco Day of the WHO takes place. The results point to four major themes on E-cigarettes: nicotine/constituents/features, tobacco control/regulation, children's use of E-cigarettes, and tobacco market/industry. CONCLUSIONS: Overall, E-cigarettes have not been a topic at the top of media agenda; however, we have identified a considerable growth of coverage about the potential concerns regarding young people's adoption of E-cigarettes advocated by parents and educators.

Climate change on Twitter: Content, media ecology and information sharing behaviour.

This article presents a study of the content, use of sources and information sharing about climate change analysing over 60,000 tweets collected using a random week sample. We discuss the potential for studying Twitter as a communicative space that is rich in different types of information and presents both new challenges and opportunities. Our analysis combines automatic thematic analysis, semantic network analysis and text classification according to psychological process categories. We also consider the media ecology of tweets and the external web links that users shared. In terms of content, the network of topics uncovered presents a multidimensional discourse that accounts for complex causal links between climate change and its consequences. The media ecology analysis revealed a narrow set of sources with a major role played by traditional media and that emotionally arousing text was more likely to be shared.

Worldviews and discursive construction of GMO-related risk perceptions in Turkey.

This paper analyses the discursive construction of the genetically modified organisms (GMOs) issue in the Turkish political arena following the public debate on the pending legislation on biosecurity. The study proposes an operational approach to semiotic/actor network theory (Latour) applied to public representations of a new technology within the theoretical frameworks of social representation theory and cultural theory of risks. It aims to highlight how different worldviews produce different risk discourses of GMOs in Turkey. Using cluster analysis to inductively extract evaluative categories, we use these to identify themes by human coding. Lastly, we apply formal concept analysis to link themes to actors and their worldviews, establishing their semantic networks. Formal concept analysis revealed four discourse networks reflecting nationalist, Islamist, progressive (left) and neo-liberal worldviews. Finally, these structures will be grounded back in the articles for a richer interpretive analysis.