COVID-19: Who gets vaccinated and who gets sick? The importance of personality, networks and institutions

About the project

The corona pandemic has led to thousands of deaths in Sweden and millions of deaths globally. Societies have shut down to varying degrees and the economic and social consequences of this are difficult to predict. The way out of the pandemic seems to lie in the hopefully effective vaccines that have been quickly developed. However, getting the vaccine to the population is a challenge that requires both solving logistical problems and convincing the population to actually get vaccinated.

The project aims to analyze how institutional factors, networks and personality affect the likelihood of being vaccinated. Since personality can not only affect the tendency to get vaccinated but also the risk of infection, the project also aims to analyze how personality and the risk of infection co-vary. The Swedish vaccination campaign is handled by the regions, which have somewhat different priority orders between different groups and which have also organized healthcare in different ways. Not least, the degree of private provision in primary care differs markedly between regions.

The first sub-project aims to investigate whether private and public providers deviate to different degrees from the order of priorities drawn up by the regions by giving priority to individuals with personal connections to healthcare professionals, local politicians and people in managerial positions. The investigation is motivated by contract theory, which indicates that private and public providers have different incentives. This can make private providers more flexible and innovative regarding aspects that are clearly defined in contracts, while at the same time allowing them to exploit shortcomings in the contracts to benefit themselves rather than fulfilling the basic mission. The vaccination campaign places great demands on flexibility, which also creates significant scope for deviation from the general order of priorities. Since all vaccinations are registered, it provides a unique opportunity to analyze whether private and public providers deviate from the plan to different extents and in different ways. In addition to providing knowledge about the relevance of contract theory, knowledge is generated about how private and public healthcare delivery works in a crisis situation. Since the crisis organization must build on the existing organization, the results can provide valuable knowledge about the pros and cons of private implementation more generally.

The second part of the project will link individual data on personality traits such as social maturity and emotional stability as well as cognitive ability to vaccination data. The purpose of this is to provide insights into which characteristics distinguish those who are reluctant to be vaccinated. Knowledge of this is important in order to be able to design and target information in future vaccination campaigns. Previous research on these issues is limited to relatively small survey studies. Since registry data on the aforementioned personality traits are available for a large and representative proportion of the population at the same time as the vaccination campaign is aimed at everyone, the study will be uniquely detailed. Since the propensity to be vaccinated can be linked to previous infection, the third part of the project aims to investigate how the same characteristics affect the likelihood of being infected and becoming ill with COVID-19.

Overall, the project will provide new knowledge about the importance of institutional factors, personal networks, and personality in influencing vaccinations against COVID-19 and the risk of contracting the disease.