earticle

영어

While the world continues to undergo an arduous battle against the COVID-19 pandemic, this dire situation that has plagued countless people with severe illness and death has exerted great pressure for vaccine research and development (Bump et al., 2021). Accordingly, unprecedented collaborations between numerous governmental and private sectors have paved the way to act swiftly to develop safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines (Wellcome, 2020). As a result of such efforts, multiple COVID-19 vaccines have become available for public use in less than a year (Slaoui & Hepbur, 2020). These newly-introduced vaccines are of great value, as they have emerged as the only hope to date to mitigate the devastating outcomes attributable to the current pandemic. However, vaccines’ efficacy can be realized only when sufficient numbers of individuals join the necessary collective response to be vaccinated (Freeman et al., 2020). Thus, increasing vaccination rates among U.S. citizens to achieve group immunity levels has become the first priority on the nation’s agenda. Corresponding to the urgent situation, academics have increased their research efforts to identify factors that increase and/or inhibit the public’s acceptance of COVID-19 vaccines. A substantial number of these previous studies have focused on numerous individual-level factors (e.g., demographics, perceptions, beliefs, knowledge, etc.) and their associations with some of the significant determinants of actual vaccine uptake (e.g., vaccine attitudes and intention to have them). In this study, we attempt to contribute significant insight to the current research endeavors by focusing our attention on certain of the individual-level factors that have been discussed rarely to date, yet can influence vaccination acceptance. The study gives special attention to the roles of the belief in a COVID-19 vaccine conspiracy, vaccine knowledge, and individual ethical orientation in vaccination contexts. We investigate the way each of these individual characteristics is associated with two significant indicators of actual vaccination acceptance, general vaccine attitudes and the specific behavioral intention to receive COVID-19 vaccines. Specifically, we explore potential associations of each and all combinations of these three individual characteristics and vaccine attitudes and willingness to receive COVID-19 vaccines. We proposed research questions and hypotheses to examine our core research questions with an online survey in which a total of 490 current U.S. residents aged over 18 participated. Their conspiracy belief, vaccine knowledge and attitudes, ethical orientation, and intention to be vaccinated against the COVID-19 virus were assessed. outcomes demonstrated several significant associations between our predicted variables and vaccine attitudes and the behavioral intention to receive COVID-19 vaccines. In particular, levels of our study participants’ conspiracy belief and vaccine knowledge each were associated significantly with general vaccine attitudes. With respect to their intention to uptake the vaccines, a significant two-way (conspiracy belief ´ vaccine knowledge; conspiracy belief ´ individual ethical orientation) and three-way (conspiracy belief ´ vaccine knowledge ´ individual ethical orientation) interactions of our predictors and behavioral intention to receive COVID-19 vaccines were found. Based on these findings, we discuss their implications for the current vaccination context. Limitations and suggestions for future study are also discussed.