Recio-Román Almudena, Recio-Menéndez Manuel, Román-González María Victoria
Department of Economics and Business, University of Almería, Carretera de Sacramento s/n, 04120 Almería, Spain.
Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2022 Mar 10;19(6):3265. doi: 10.3390/ijerph19063265.
Politics is ubiquitous in public health, but vaccines had never been weaponized to instill distrust to gain political advantage. In pandemic and post-pandemic scenarios, populist political parties could use vaccine-related issues to generate distrust in evidence-based knowledge. Therefore, some questions arise. What impact could populist political parties impinge on vaccination uptake rates through sowing political discontent? What could the medical institutions do to avoid the adverse effects that these political strategies could infringe? For answering these research questions, we first hypothesized that vaccine uptake was negatively associated with distrust in the institutions. Furthermore, we analyzed whether populism mediates this relationship. In doing so, we hypothesized a positive association between distrust and populism, because populists, mainly fueled by politically discontent citizens, offer hope of a better future, blaming their misfortune on the actions of the elite. Additionally, we hypothesized that those citizens with a higher level of political dissatisfaction, following the claims of the populist political parties, will have lower vaccine uptake results, because they will be discouraged from making the efforts to counter the pandemic. Based on a survey carried out by the European Commission that covered 27 E.U. + U.K. countries (totaling 27,524 respondents), this paper proves that an individual's political discontent fully mediates the relationship between distrust in institutions and vaccine uptake. Targeting the vaccine-hesitant population is quite convenient for populists because they only need to convince a minority of citizens not to be vaccinated to achieve their destabilizing goals. New outbreaks will appear if the minimum herd immunity coverage is not reached, reinforcing a vicious circle of distrust in elites, in consequence. For tackling this matter, recommendations are given to institutional managers from a social marketing standpoint.
政治在公共卫生领域无处不在，但疫苗从未被武器化以灌输不信任来获取政治优势。在疫情期间和疫情后，民粹主义政党可能会利用与疫苗相关的问题来引发对循证知识的不信任。因此，出现了一些问题。民粹主义政党通过播撒政治不满情绪会对疫苗接种率产生何种影响？医疗机构可以采取什么措施来避免这些政治策略可能带来的不利影响？为了回答这些研究问题，我们首先假设疫苗接种率与对机构的不信任呈负相关。此外，我们分析了民粹主义是否介导了这种关系。在此过程中，我们假设不信任与民粹主义之间存在正相关，因为民粹主义者主要受到政治上不满的公民的推动，他们提供了一个更美好未来的希望，并将他们的不幸归咎于精英的行为。此外，我们假设，那些政治不满程度较高的公民，按照民粹主义政党的主张，疫苗接种结果会更低，因为他们会因气馁而不愿付出努力来对抗疫情。基于欧盟委员会开展的一项覆盖27个欧盟国家加英国（共27524名受访者）的调查，本文证明个人的政治不满完全介导了对机构的不信任与疫苗接种率之间的关系。针对那些对疫苗犹豫不决的人群对民粹主义者来说相当便利，因为他们只需说服少数公民不接种疫苗就能实现其破坏稳定的目标。如果未达到最低群体免疫覆盖率，新的疫情爆发将会出现，进而强化对精英不信任的恶性循环。为了解决这个问题，从社会营销的角度向机构管理者提出了建议。
