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WHO approves? Relative trust, the WHO, and China’s COVID-19 vaccines

This paper aims to answer a general question: whether an international organization (IO) is able to shape public opinion in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Since the pandemic took hold in early 2020, countries across the globe have switched gear from prevention to vaccination. Most had to not...

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Autores principales: Sheen, Greg Chih-Hsin, Tung, Hans H., Wu, Chien-Huei, Wu, Wen-Chin
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Springer US 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9684827/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36467252
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11558-022-09481-1
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author Sheen, Greg Chih-Hsin
Tung, Hans H.
Wu, Chien-Huei
Wu, Wen-Chin
author_facet Sheen, Greg Chih-Hsin
Tung, Hans H.
Wu, Chien-Huei
Wu, Wen-Chin
author_sort Sheen, Greg Chih-Hsin
collection PubMed
description This paper aims to answer a general question: whether an international organization (IO) is able to shape public opinion in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Since the pandemic took hold in early 2020, countries across the globe have switched gear from prevention to vaccination. Most had to not only secure a sufficient supply of vaccines, but also to curb vaccine hesitancy among their populations. Can endorsement by an international organization like the World Health Organization (WHO) enhance a vaccine’s acceptability? Based on a survey experiment conducted in Taiwan, our study leverages the special relationship between China and Taiwan to show that WHO endorsement can induce acceptance of Chinese vaccines among Taiwanese people. However, the effect is found to be contextual in the sense that it only works when people’s trust in the WHO is higher than their trust in the vaccine’s country of origin. Our study not only contributes to the literature of IO legitimacy by empirically showing IOs’ causal effects on public opinion, but also sheds light on how a vaccine’s credibility can be enhanced to promote vaccination uptake. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11558-022-09481-1.
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spelling pubmed-96848272022-11-28 WHO approves? Relative trust, the WHO, and China’s COVID-19 vaccines Sheen, Greg Chih-Hsin Tung, Hans H. Wu, Chien-Huei Wu, Wen-Chin Rev Int Organ Article This paper aims to answer a general question: whether an international organization (IO) is able to shape public opinion in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Since the pandemic took hold in early 2020, countries across the globe have switched gear from prevention to vaccination. Most had to not only secure a sufficient supply of vaccines, but also to curb vaccine hesitancy among their populations. Can endorsement by an international organization like the World Health Organization (WHO) enhance a vaccine’s acceptability? Based on a survey experiment conducted in Taiwan, our study leverages the special relationship between China and Taiwan to show that WHO endorsement can induce acceptance of Chinese vaccines among Taiwanese people. However, the effect is found to be contextual in the sense that it only works when people’s trust in the WHO is higher than their trust in the vaccine’s country of origin. Our study not only contributes to the literature of IO legitimacy by empirically showing IOs’ causal effects on public opinion, but also sheds light on how a vaccine’s credibility can be enhanced to promote vaccination uptake. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11558-022-09481-1. Springer US 2022-11-21 /pmc/articles/PMC9684827/ /pubmed/36467252 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11558-022-09481-1 Text en © The Author(s) 2022 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) .
spellingShingle Article
Sheen, Greg Chih-Hsin
Tung, Hans H.
Wu, Chien-Huei
Wu, Wen-Chin
WHO approves? Relative trust, the WHO, and China’s COVID-19 vaccines
title WHO approves? Relative trust, the WHO, and China’s COVID-19 vaccines
title_full WHO approves? Relative trust, the WHO, and China’s COVID-19 vaccines
title_fullStr WHO approves? Relative trust, the WHO, and China’s COVID-19 vaccines
title_full_unstemmed WHO approves? Relative trust, the WHO, and China’s COVID-19 vaccines
title_short WHO approves? Relative trust, the WHO, and China’s COVID-19 vaccines
title_sort who approves? relative trust, the who, and china’s covid-19 vaccines
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9684827/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36467252
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11558-022-09481-1
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