What leads to vaccine compliance? Evidence from healthcare workers.

Background: Vaccine hesitancy is a problematic phenomenon for vaccination campaigns. It played a significant role during the recent COVID-19 pandemic, where the role of HealthCare Workers (HCW) was particularly relevant. Understanding the motivation of HCW regarding vaccines is, therefore, paramount. Design and methods: We presented an online questionnaire to 5283 Italian HCW to investigate the role played by personal reasons and the potential perception of risk, the social environment, and the vaccine efficacy and safety perception in affecting HCW willingness to adhere to the vaccination campaign. Results: First, we discovered that those who took the vaccine to minimize health risk tended to vaccinate earlier, whereas those who did it due to social pressure received it later. Second, that those who indicated acquaintances as more important than the workplace in their vaccination choice showed more altruistic-related reasons to vaccinate, and the reverse held true. Third, that regarding two salient features of the vaccine, namely safety and efficacy, only the former was playing a role in the willingness to vaccinate, whereas the latter did not show an impact. Conclusions: The lessons that can be taken from these results are that future communication campaigns that push toward a timely vaccination should focus less on the social pressure, especially the one related to work environments, and more on the internal motivations of workers. Moreover, we can conclude that emphasizing the safety features of vaccines tend to play a more significant role in shaping vaccine behaviors than emphasizing efficacy.