Vaccine Hesitancy in COVID-19: A Behavioural Economics Approach—A Systematic Literature Review

Abstract

The vaccination drive for the COVID-19 pandemic was initiated globally more than a year ago, with booster shots being the new addition currently. There are some setbacks regarding the acceptance of the vaccine that the government needs to tackle to achieve a fully vaccinated ecosystem. Vaccine hesitancy is not a new concept and has been witnessed by people for decades. In simple terms, vaccine hesitancy refers to a situation where people are reluctant to get vaccinated despite its availability. This is due to technological retrogression, superstitions, doubt towards the government and misinformation. This paper is a systematic literature review to analyse the behavioural economics theories shown by people towards vaccines in the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. We aim to connect psychological and economic factors that lead to this hesitancy through behavioural economics. Availability bias, omission bias, confirmation bias, incentives, anticipated regret, illusory correlation, recency effect, tailoring and framing are the biases that influence decision-making under the behavioural economics framework. This paper is an attempt to analyse these principles and explain potential barriers to vaccine acceptance and intervention strategies for medical professionals and the state.