COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy: The effects of combining direct and indirect online opinion cues on psychological reactance to health campaigns

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2021.107057Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Anti-vaccine comments on vaccine-promoting posts provoked psychological reactance to the posts in audiences of the posts.

  • Anti-vaccine comments misled audiences by making them believe that others dislike and reject the vaccination education.

  • When pro-vaccine comments were accompanied by rejection emojis, they triggered as much reactance as anti-vaccine comments.

  • Audiences' pre-existing attitudes did not affect the effects of the combined direct and indirect opinion cues.

  • Greater reactance increased people's COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy.

Abstract

This study aims to examine whether and how user-generated comments and reaction emojis on COVID-19 vaccine-promoting Facebook posts induce psychological reactance to posts and vaccine hesitancy in audiences of the posts. An online experiment including 465 American adults showed that, compared with COVID-19 vaccine promotion posts accompanied by pro-vaccine comments, those accompanied by anti-vaccine comments provoked greater reactance in audiences through the mediating effects of bandwagon perception and the presumed influence of the posts on others. Greater reactance, in turn, increased audiences' COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy. Additionally, reaction emojis altered the comments' effects such that pro-vaccine comments triggered less reactance than anti-vaccine comments when the pro-vaccine comments were accompanied by agreement emojis (i.e., “like” and “love”); whereas there was no significant difference between pro-vaccine comments and anti-vaccine comments in reactance when the pro-vaccine comments were accompanied by rejection emojis (i.e., “angry” and “sad”). Furthermore, audiences’ pre-existing attitudes did not affect the effects of opinion cues on their′ reactance and vaccine hesitancy.

Keywords

Bandwagon effects
Comments
Presumed influence on others
Psychological reactance
Reaction emojis
Vaccine hesitancy

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This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

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