Applying lessons from behavioural sciences to vaccination acceptance and demand : final report

This Joint Research Centre (JRC) technical report gives an overview of a large project on vaccination acceptance and demand and illustrates its outcomes and lessons learnt. The project started at the end of 2019 and was completed in 2022. The overarching objective of the project was to facilitate and execute research on vaccine confidence, identifying behavioural determinants of vaccine hesitancy across different subgroups of the population, like parents and healthcare workers, for specific categories of vaccines in several Member States of the European Union. The project highlighted the complexity of vaccine acceptance and demand, bringing to attention several challenges and opportunities. In particular, it has brought out the importance of civic trust in increasing vaccination acceptance and demand and the crucial role played by healthcare providers. While it proposes a taxonomy of parents (classifying them into four distinct categories: acceptors, hesitant acceptors, delayers, and skippers) that allows for more effective, targeted policy interventions, it also points out that some groups are resistant to nearly all attempts at increasing vaccination uptake. Furthermore, the project seized the opportunity to take stock of the progress made in understanding the behavioural determinants of vaccination during the COVID-19 pandemic. This invaluable knowledge is fundamental to improved health emergency preparedness, response plans and infrastructures. The project consisted of four key and four supplementary activities. The activities were designed by JRC's Competence Centre on Behavioural Insights (CCBI) and executed with the support of external contractors.