Social norms, political polarization, and vaccination attitudes: Evidence from a survey experiment in Turkey
European Economic Review, cilt.168, 2024 (SSCI, Scopus)
- Yayın Türü: Makale / Tam Makale
- Cilt numarası: 168
- Basım Tarihi: 2024
- Doi Numarası: 10.1016/j.euroecorev.2024.104818
- Dergi Adı: European Economic Review
- Derginin Tarandığı İndeksler: Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI), Scopus
- Anahtar Kelimeler: Social norms, Outgroup discrimination, Polarization, Vaccination attitudes, Experiment
- Boğaziçi Üniversitesi Adresli: Evet
Özet
This paper examines vaccination as a descriptive social norm in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic. Using a large-scale survey experiment in Turkey, we first elicit respondents’ vaccination attitudes and show that political affiliation is a strong predictor of it. We then use economic games to measure the extent of outgroup discrimination induced by respondents’ attitudes towards vaccination. We find that while both pro- and anti-vaxxers discriminate against each other substantially, the pro-vaxxers discriminate more than the anti-vaxxers do. This polarization intensifies when pro- and anti-vaxxers perceive a political difference between them. Using randomized informational treatments, we show that a reminder or priming of external threats, appealing to a broadly shared social identity, might mitigate such outgroup discrimination.