Effects of political versus expert messaging on vaccination intentions of Trump voters
Name:
journal.pone.0257988.pdf
Size:
521.2Kb
Format:
PDF
Description:
Final Published Version
Affiliation
College of Social and Behavioral Sciences, University of ArizonaUniversity of Arizona
Issue Date
2021
Metadata
Show full item recordPublisher
Public Library of ScienceCitation
Robertson, C. T., Bentele, K., Meyerson, B., Wood, A. S. A., & Salwa, J. (2021). Effects of political versus expert messaging on vaccination intentions of Trump voters. PLoS ONE, 16(9 September).Journal
PLoS ONERights
Copyright © 2021 Robertson et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License.Collection Information
This item from the UA Faculty Publications collection is made available by the University of Arizona with support from the University of Arizona Libraries. If you have questions, please contact us at repository@u.library.arizona.edu.Abstract
To increase COVID-19 vaccine uptake in resistant populations, such as Republicans, focus groups suggest that it is best to de-politicize the issue by sharing five facts from a public health expert. Yet polls suggest that Trump voters trust former President Donald Trump for medical advice more than they trust experts. We conducted an online, randomized, national experiment among 387 non-vaccinated Trump voters, using two brief audiovisual artifacts from Spring 2021, either facts delivered by an expert versus political claims delivered by President Trump. Relative to the control group, Trump voters who viewed the video of Trump endorsing the vaccine were 85% more likely to answer “yes” as opposed to “no” in their intention to get fully vaccinated (RRR = 1.85, 95% CI 1.01 to 3.40; P = .048). There were no significant differences between those hearing the public health expert excerpt and the control group (for “yes” relative to “no” RRR = 1.14, 95% CI 0.61 to 2.12; P = .68). These findings suggest that a political speaker’s endorsement of the COVID-19 vaccine may increase uptake among those who identify with that speaker. Contrary to highly-publicized focus group findings, our randomized experiment found that an expert’s factually accurate message may not be effectual to increase vaccination intentions. © 2021 Robertson et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.Note
Open access journalISSN
1932-6203Version
Final published versionae974a485f413a2113503eed53cd6c53
10.1371/journal.pone.0257988
Scopus Count
Collections
Except where otherwise noted, this item's license is described as Copyright © 2021 Robertson et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License.