How Internet Access Drives Global Vaccine Skepticism

Abstract

Counterintuitively, wealthier countries tend to be more vaccine skeptical than poorer countries. One possible explanation—the Online Accessibility hypothesis—posits that internet access facilitates the spread of antivaccine misinformation, particularly for those lower in scientific and medical expert trust. Another explanation—the Out of Sight hypothesis—is that some citizens in richer countries fail to consider the risks of vaccine-preventable diseases because they are rarely experienced directly. Merging country-level data with nationally representative survey data (N = 149,014) from 144 countries, we find evidence for the Online Accessibility hypothesis. These findings are robust to alternate measures of wealth and modeling strategies.