Factors Affecting Young Adults’ Decision Making to Undergo COVID-19 Vaccination: A Patient Preference Study

Abstract

Young adults are a substantial driver of lagging vaccination against COVID-19 worldwide. We aimed to understand what vaccine or vaccination environment attributes may affect young adults’ vaccine inclination. We contacted a convenience sample of 1415 students to recruit a minimum of 150 individuals for a web-based discrete choice experiment. The respondents were asked to choose one of two hypothetical vaccines, defined by six attributes—vaccine efficacy, risk of mild side effects, protection duration, administration route, recommender, and travel time to the vaccination site. Individual preferences were calculated with the Markov chain Monte Carlo hierarchical Bayes estimation. A total of 445 individuals (mean age 24.4 years, 272 (61.1%) women) completed the survey between 22 March and 3 May 2021. Vaccine protection duration (28.3 (95% CI, 27.0–29.6)) and vaccine efficacy in preventing COVID-19 (27.5 (95% CI, 26.3–28.8)) were the most important, followed by the risk of vaccine side effects (17.3 (95% CI, 16.2–18.4)). Individuals reluctant or unsure about vaccination (21.1%) prioritized the potential for mild side effects higher and vaccine efficacy lower than the vaccine-inclined individuals. New vaccination programs that target young adults should emphasize the protection duration, low risk of vaccine side effects, and high efficacy.