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Political Ideology and Trust in Government to Ensure Vaccine Safety: Using a U.S. Survey to Explore the Role of Political Trust

Since early 2020, the rapid expansion of COVID-19 has raised concerns about vaccine safety and the government’s handling of it. Particularly notable and concerning has been a growing number of people who oppose vaccines, as this opposition poses a threat to public health. Those for and against vacci...

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Autores principales: Lim, Jaeyoung, Moon, Kuk-Kyoung
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10002444/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36901469
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph20054459
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author Lim, Jaeyoung
Moon, Kuk-Kyoung
author_facet Lim, Jaeyoung
Moon, Kuk-Kyoung
author_sort Lim, Jaeyoung
collection PubMed
description Since early 2020, the rapid expansion of COVID-19 has raised concerns about vaccine safety and the government’s handling of it. Particularly notable and concerning has been a growing number of people who oppose vaccines, as this opposition poses a threat to public health. Those for and against vaccination have become polarized along a political divide. Within this context, this study focuses on the role of political trust, exploring whether political ideology is associated with the perception that the government can ensure the safety of vaccines and whether there is a moderator that can alleviate the concerns of those who oppose the government’s handling of vaccine safety on ideological grounds. This study relies on the 2021 U.S. General Social Survey (GSS) and employs an ordered probit method because the dependent variable is an ordered category. The ordered probit model includes a weight provided by the U.S. GSS to account for the population. The sample size was 473 because of the inclusion of all the variables relevant to this study. The results obtained are as follows: First, conservatives associate negatively with support for the government’s handling of vaccine safety. Second, more importantly, conservatives exhibit a higher trust level toward the government to ensure vaccine safety if their level of political trust increases. The results point to important implications. Political ideology matters in how individuals view the government’s handling of vaccine safety. Political trust plays a key role in helping individuals alter their views toward the government’s handling of vaccine safety. This points to a need for the government to take political trust seriously and work hard to improve the public’s trust in the government.
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spelling pubmed-100024442023-03-11 Political Ideology and Trust in Government to Ensure Vaccine Safety: Using a U.S. Survey to Explore the Role of Political Trust Lim, Jaeyoung Moon, Kuk-Kyoung Int J Environ Res Public Health Article Since early 2020, the rapid expansion of COVID-19 has raised concerns about vaccine safety and the government’s handling of it. Particularly notable and concerning has been a growing number of people who oppose vaccines, as this opposition poses a threat to public health. Those for and against vaccination have become polarized along a political divide. Within this context, this study focuses on the role of political trust, exploring whether political ideology is associated with the perception that the government can ensure the safety of vaccines and whether there is a moderator that can alleviate the concerns of those who oppose the government’s handling of vaccine safety on ideological grounds. This study relies on the 2021 U.S. General Social Survey (GSS) and employs an ordered probit method because the dependent variable is an ordered category. The ordered probit model includes a weight provided by the U.S. GSS to account for the population. The sample size was 473 because of the inclusion of all the variables relevant to this study. The results obtained are as follows: First, conservatives associate negatively with support for the government’s handling of vaccine safety. Second, more importantly, conservatives exhibit a higher trust level toward the government to ensure vaccine safety if their level of political trust increases. The results point to important implications. Political ideology matters in how individuals view the government’s handling of vaccine safety. Political trust plays a key role in helping individuals alter their views toward the government’s handling of vaccine safety. This points to a need for the government to take political trust seriously and work hard to improve the public’s trust in the government. MDPI 2023-03-02 /pmc/articles/PMC10002444/ /pubmed/36901469 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph20054459 Text en © 2023 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Lim, Jaeyoung
Moon, Kuk-Kyoung
Political Ideology and Trust in Government to Ensure Vaccine Safety: Using a U.S. Survey to Explore the Role of Political Trust
title Political Ideology and Trust in Government to Ensure Vaccine Safety: Using a U.S. Survey to Explore the Role of Political Trust
title_full Political Ideology and Trust in Government to Ensure Vaccine Safety: Using a U.S. Survey to Explore the Role of Political Trust
title_fullStr Political Ideology and Trust in Government to Ensure Vaccine Safety: Using a U.S. Survey to Explore the Role of Political Trust
title_full_unstemmed Political Ideology and Trust in Government to Ensure Vaccine Safety: Using a U.S. Survey to Explore the Role of Political Trust
title_short Political Ideology and Trust in Government to Ensure Vaccine Safety: Using a U.S. Survey to Explore the Role of Political Trust
title_sort political ideology and trust in government to ensure vaccine safety: using a u.s. survey to explore the role of political trust
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10002444/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36901469
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph20054459
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