- Published
- 31 January 2022
- Journal article
Increasing vaccination intention in pandemic times: a social marketing perspective
- Authors
- Source
- Italian Journal of Marketing
Abstract
With the release of several COVID-19 vaccines, hopes for ending the pandemic have emerged. However, the uptake of the vaccines is largely voluntary and depends on the intentions of the public. From a social marketing perspective, this study takes the case of Italy to identify and test factors that are likely to increase COVID-19-vaccine intention. A sample of 3893 respondents was collected throughout Italy and a model empirically tested by structural equation modeling. The findings suggest that a social marketing campaign for undertaking COVID-19 vaccines should educate the public, going beyond just safety and efficacy, and create positive social norms by combatting misinformation on various platforms, including social media. Furthermore, it was found that economic hardship from COVID-19 does not automatically translate to vaccination intention and that social marketing campaigns should particularly target economically vulnerable and important segments. Also, instilling a craving for travel could potentially stimulate citizens to undertake COVID-19 inoculation. Finally, contributions and implications for social marketing COVID-19 vaccines in Italy and elsewhere are addressed.
Rights
© The Author(s) 2022 This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Cite as
Wassler, P., Del Chiappa, G., Nguyen, T., Fedeli, G. & Williams, N. 2022, 'Increasing vaccination intention in pandemic times: a social marketing perspective', Italian Journal of Marketing, 31st January 2022, pp. 37-58. https://doi.org/10.1007/s43039-022-00049-w