COVID-19 internet vaccination information and vaccine administration: evidence from the United States

This paper examines the impact of internet information on COVID-19 vaccination rates across U.S. states. Does greater information on the internet about COVID-19 vaccine access increase the number of vaccines administered? Does greater information about COVID-19 vaccine reliability facilitate vaccine administration? To gauge the COVID-19 related information on the world-wide-web we created two cross-state datasets using Google search. One search dealt with searching for information on vaccination availability and scheduling in each state, while the other search involved information on vaccine reliability and its side effects. The estimation results showed that greater availability of the relevant information on the internet increased vaccine administration rates, and this was true for both types of internet searches, resulting in an affirmative answer to the questions above. In contrast, the diffusion of internet access and the digital divide across states did not have a significant impact on vaccination rates. Whereas supply chain issues have garnered most of the attention in terms of the limitations of quickly vaccinating the public, our results show that internet information might be acting as a (largely unheralded) enabler.