Revealing decision-making strategies of Americans in taking COVID-19 vaccination

Date

2024

Authors

Aghaeeyan, Azadeh
Ramazi, Pouria
Lewis, Mark A.

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Publisher

Bulletin of Mathematical Biology

Abstract

Efficient coverage for newly developed vaccines requires knowing which groups of individuals will accept the vaccine immediately and which will take longer to accept or never accept. Of those who may eventually accept the vaccine, there are two main types: success-based learners, basing their decisions on others’ satisfaction, and myopic rationalists, attending to their own immediate perceived benefit. We used COVID-19 vaccination data to fit a mechanistic model capturing the distinct effects of the two types on the vaccination progress. We estimated that 47% of Americans behaved as myopic rationalists with a high variation across the jurisdictions, from 31% in Mississippi to 76% in Vermont. The proportion was correlated with the vaccination coverage, proportion of votes in favor of Democrats in 2020 presidential election, and education score.

Description

Keywords

decision-making strategies, imitation dynamics, best-response dynamics, COVID-19, vaccine uptake

Citation

Aghaeeyan, A., Ramazi, P., & Lewis, M. A. (2024). Revealing decision-making strategies of Americans in taking COVID-19 vaccination. Bulletin of Mathematical Biology, 86(6). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11538-024-01290-4