Visual policy narrative messaging improves COVID-19 vaccine uptake

In the face of vaccine hesitancy, public health officials are seeking more effective risk communication approaches to increase vaccination rates. We test the influence of visual policy narratives on COVID-19 vaccination behavior through a panel survey experiment conducted in early 2021 (n = 3,900) and then 8 weeks later (n = 2,268). We examine the effects of three visual policy narrative messages that test the narrative mechanism of character selection (yourself, your circle, and your community) and a nonnarrative control on COVID-19 vaccine behavior. Visual risk messages that use narratives positively influence COVID-19 vaccination through serial mediation of affective response to the messages and motivation to get the COVID-19 vaccination. Additionally, character selection matters, as messages focusing on protecting others (i.e. your circle and your community) perform stronger than those of yourself. Political ideology moderated some of the effects, with conservative respondents in the nonnarrative control condition having a higher probability of vaccination in comparison to the protect yourself condition. Taken together, these results suggest that public health officials should use narrative-based visual communication messages that emphasize communal benefits of vaccinations.