Vaccine hesitancy and (fake) news: Quasi-experimental evidence from Italy.
Health Econ
; 28(11): 1377-1382, 2019 11.
Article
in En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-31429153
ABSTRACT
The spread of fake news and misinformation on social media is blamed as a primary cause of vaccine hesitancy, which is one of the major threats to global health, according to the World Health Organization. This paper studies the effect of the diffusion of misinformation on immunization rates in Italy by exploiting a quasi-experiment that occurred in 2012, when the Court of Rimini officially recognized a causal link between the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine and autism and awarded injury compensation. To this end, we exploit the virality of misinformation following the 2012 Italian court's ruling, along with the intensity of exposure to nontraditional media driven by regional infrastructural differences in Internet broadband coverage. Using a Difference-in-Differences regression on regional panel data, we show that the spread of this news resulted in a decrease in child immunization rates for all types of vaccines.
Key words
Full text:
1
Collection:
01-internacional
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
Vaccines
/
Patient Acceptance of Health Care
/
Communication
Limits:
Child
/
Humans
Country/Region as subject:
Europa
Language:
En
Journal:
Health Econ
Journal subject:
SERVICOS DE SAUDE
Year:
2019
Document type:
Article
Affiliation country:
Italia