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Factors That Shape People’s Attitudes towards the COVID-19 Pandemic in Germany—The Influence of MEDIA, Politics and Personal Characteristics
Misinformation that accompanied the current SARS-CoV-2 pandemic led to an impaired risk perception, resulting in the refusal of personal protection measures, as well as a reduced willingness to receive a vaccination. In order to identify factors that might influence people’s attitudes towards COVID-...
Autores principales: | , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
MDPI
2021
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8345618/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34360063 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18157772 |
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author | El-Far Cardo, Aida Kraus, Thomas Kaifie, Andrea |
author_facet | El-Far Cardo, Aida Kraus, Thomas Kaifie, Andrea |
author_sort | El-Far Cardo, Aida |
collection | PubMed |
description | Misinformation that accompanied the current SARS-CoV-2 pandemic led to an impaired risk perception, resulting in the refusal of personal protection measures, as well as a reduced willingness to receive a vaccination. In order to identify factors that might influence people’s attitudes towards COVID-19 policies and engagement in mitigation measures, we carried out a cross-sectional study in Germany. Altogether, n = 808 participants completed our questionnaire concerning items on demographics, media consumption, risk perception, and trust in health authorities, as well as willingness to receive a vaccination. An overwhelming majority of our participants perceived SARS-CoV-2 as a health threat (85.7%), and almost two thirds (63.5%) mentioned they would get vaccinated against SARS-CoV-2 when a vaccination was available. A greater likelihood of vaccination intention was associated with being male (71.5% male vs. 60% female, p < 0.05), left-wing voting, trusting health authorities, using public media as an information source about COVID-19, and, in particular, perceiving COVID-19 as a health threat. A better understanding of factors that contribute to vaccine hesitancy is indispensable in order to eliminate doubts, increase vaccination rates, and create herd immunity, to stop further virus transmission. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-8345618 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2021 |
publisher | MDPI |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-83456182021-08-07 Factors That Shape People’s Attitudes towards the COVID-19 Pandemic in Germany—The Influence of MEDIA, Politics and Personal Characteristics El-Far Cardo, Aida Kraus, Thomas Kaifie, Andrea Int J Environ Res Public Health Article Misinformation that accompanied the current SARS-CoV-2 pandemic led to an impaired risk perception, resulting in the refusal of personal protection measures, as well as a reduced willingness to receive a vaccination. In order to identify factors that might influence people’s attitudes towards COVID-19 policies and engagement in mitigation measures, we carried out a cross-sectional study in Germany. Altogether, n = 808 participants completed our questionnaire concerning items on demographics, media consumption, risk perception, and trust in health authorities, as well as willingness to receive a vaccination. An overwhelming majority of our participants perceived SARS-CoV-2 as a health threat (85.7%), and almost two thirds (63.5%) mentioned they would get vaccinated against SARS-CoV-2 when a vaccination was available. A greater likelihood of vaccination intention was associated with being male (71.5% male vs. 60% female, p < 0.05), left-wing voting, trusting health authorities, using public media as an information source about COVID-19, and, in particular, perceiving COVID-19 as a health threat. A better understanding of factors that contribute to vaccine hesitancy is indispensable in order to eliminate doubts, increase vaccination rates, and create herd immunity, to stop further virus transmission. MDPI 2021-07-22 /pmc/articles/PMC8345618/ /pubmed/34360063 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18157772 Text en © 2021 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 El-Far Cardo, Aida Kraus, Thomas Kaifie, Andrea Factors That Shape People’s Attitudes towards the COVID-19 Pandemic in Germany—The Influence of MEDIA, Politics and Personal Characteristics |
title | Factors That Shape People’s Attitudes towards the COVID-19 Pandemic in Germany—The Influence of MEDIA, Politics and Personal Characteristics |
title_full | Factors That Shape People’s Attitudes towards the COVID-19 Pandemic in Germany—The Influence of MEDIA, Politics and Personal Characteristics |
title_fullStr | Factors That Shape People’s Attitudes towards the COVID-19 Pandemic in Germany—The Influence of MEDIA, Politics and Personal Characteristics |
title_full_unstemmed | Factors That Shape People’s Attitudes towards the COVID-19 Pandemic in Germany—The Influence of MEDIA, Politics and Personal Characteristics |
title_short | Factors That Shape People’s Attitudes towards the COVID-19 Pandemic in Germany—The Influence of MEDIA, Politics and Personal Characteristics |
title_sort | factors that shape people’s attitudes towards the covid-19 pandemic in germany—the influence of media, politics and personal characteristics |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8345618/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34360063 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18157772 |
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