Who wants COVID-19 vaccination to be compulsory? The impact of party cues, left-right ideology, and populism
| Published date | 01 August 2023 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/02633957211061999 |
| Author | Christina-Marie Juen,Michael Jankowski,Robert A Huber,Torren Frank,Leena Maaß,Markus Tepe |
| Date | 01 August 2023 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/02633957211061999
Politics
2023, Vol. 43(3) 330 –350
© The Author(s) 2021
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DOI: 10.1177/02633957211061999
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Who wants COVID-19
vaccination to be compulsory?
The impact of party cues, left-
right ideology, and populism
Christina-Marie Juen
University of Oldenburg, Germany
Michael Jankowski
University of Bremen, Germany
Robert A Huber
University of Salzburg, Austria
Torren Frank
Leena Maaß
Markus Tepe
University of Oldenburg, Germany
Abstract
Vaccine hesitancy is one of the major obstacles for successfully combating the ongoing COVID-19
pandemic. To achieve a sufficiently high vaccination rate, calls for compulsory vaccinations have been
discussed controversially. This study analyses what drives citizens’ attitudes towards compulsory
vaccination during the COVID-19 pandemic. Specifically, we are interested in the impact of party-
and expert cues on public attitudes. We further expect populist attitudes to be an important
indicator of the rejection of compulsory vaccination due to their scepticism towards science. To
test these expectations, we rely on a cueing experiment conducted on a sample of 2265 German
citizens. We test for the effects of in-party and out-party cues as well as public health expert cues.
We find evidence for in-party cues, meaning that respondents adjust their position on this issue in
the direction of their most preferred party. Similar results can be found for public health expert
cues. However, there is no evidence for out-party cues. Further analyses reveal that support for
compulsory vaccinations is not affected by left-right placement directly. Instead, only the combination
of right-wing attitudes and populism negatively affects support for compulsory vaccination.
Keywords
compulsory vaccination, COVID-19 pandemic, cueing experiment, populist attitudes, SARS-CoV-2
Received: 21st April 2021; Revised version received: September 28th 2021; Accepted: 29th September 2021
Corresponding author:
Christina-Marie Juen, University of Oldenburg, Ammerländer Heerstraße 114-118, Oldenburg 26129, Germany.
Email: christina-marie.juen@uol.de
1061999POL0010.1177/02633957211061999PoliticsJuen et al.
research-article2021
Article
Juen et al. 331
Introduction
Vaccines are the most effective medical instrument to stop the current COVID-19 pan-
demic. The aim is to achieve herd immunity through a high vaccination rate to protect
vulnerable groups that cannot be vaccinated themselves. Whether someone takes advan-
tage of vaccination is usually a voluntary decision. However, large-scale refusal of volun-
tary vaccinations poses an issue to public health and has been a long-standing problem in
many societies that intensified in recent years (MacDonald, 2015; Peretti-Watel et al.,
2014; WHO, 2014). In this regard, reluctance towards COVID-19 vaccination is no
exception (e.g. Neumann-Böhme et al., 2020). Consequently, debates about how a suffi-
cient number of citizens can be vaccinated against COVID-19 have started in many coun-
tries, including voices that call for compulsory vaccinations. Examples include the United
States, where many healthcare workers, federal government employees, and US military
troops are now mandated to get vaccinated,1 or also Italy, where compulsory vaccination
is already introduced for healthcare workers but is also discussed for the whole popula-
tion.2 Also in Germany, where for instance, the Prime Minister of the State of Bavaria
indicated that he would be ‘open’ to the idea of compulsory COVID-19 vaccination3 and
recently suggested compulsory vaccinations for certain groups of the society,4 calls for
compulsory vaccination exist.
These examples demonstrate that compulsory vaccinations against COVID-19 are not
only seriously discussed in politics but are also partly introduced in some countries
already. Compulsory COVID-19 vaccination is particularly discussed these days since we
can observe stagnating numbers of vaccinations in most countries, that are far from the
initially expected vaccination rates. Thus, while the evidence in favour of compulsory
vaccinations is fairly clear, governments cannot implement such policies against the citi-
zens’ will. Thus, public support for compulsory vaccinations is a necessary condition for
its implementation. This article analyses citizens’ support for the idea of compulsory vac-
cination, and more specifically aims to shed light on the impact of party- and health
expert cues on citizens when deciding about compulsory vaccination.
The question of whether certain vaccinations should be compulsory has already been
addressed concerning various other diseases for which vaccines already exist (Betsch and
Böhm, 2016; Draeger et al., 2019). Recent studies provide first insight on the impact of
political factors on the willingness to get vaccinated (e.g. Debus and Tosun, 2021; Paul
et al., 2021; Smith et al., 2021), and on attitudes towards compulsory vaccination (Paul
et al., 2021; Graeber et al., 2021). With regard to this, and in order to provide a more pro-
found insight on attitudes on compulsory vaccination, in this study, we argue that party
cues as well as citizens’ ideological positions are the main drivers of compulsory vaccina-
tion attitudes. First, citizens frequently rely on cues when forming an opinion on a specific
topic (Campbell et al., 1960; Druckman, 2001). This literature suggests that citizens update
their views on compulsory vaccination when they learn about their most preferred party’s
position on this topic. Similarly, citizens are not likely to adopt a position if endorsed by
the least preferred party (‘out-party cue’). In the face of a national health crisis, the ques-
tion arises whether party cues might be replaced by other relevant cues, such as the recom-
mendations of health experts (‘expert cue’). Thus, we anticipate that calls against
compulsory vaccinations should have negative effects, if coming from experts or the in-
party cue, whereas we assume the opposite effect for out-party cues.
Beyond that, we expect that ideological positions play an important role. So far, only few
studies considered political ideology as an influential factor for vaccination attitudes (e.g.
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