Policy Incentives and Determinants of Citizens’ COVID-19 Vaccination Motives - No. 434 - Working Paper

Aug 30, 2026

This paper reports survey results on what shapes vaccine recipients’ confidence and why people choose vaccination. Interviews were conducted in December 2021 with individuals waiting at vaccination centers as the Omicron variant spread. Risk-averse, socially distancing-compliant respondents show higher vaccine confidence, motivated by protecting self and others. In contrast, policy incentives such as “3G/2G” restrictions encourage risk-tolerant individuals to access public spaces. Voting-regular respondents show limited fear of side effects, informing tailored vaccination policy design.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages23

Reading Time58 min

AccessFree to download

Abstract

Introduction

COVID-19 pandemic and policy measures

Vaccines as a solution and the vaccination gap

Restriction policies as incentives (3G/2G and 2G+)

Research gap and study design

University of Göttingen Working Paper in Economics Policy Incentives and Determinants of Citizens’COVID-19 Vaccination Motives Claudia Keser and Holger A. Rau February 2022 No. 434 Policy Incentives and Determinants of Citizens' COVID-19 Vaccination Motives ∗ Claudia Keser†1 and Holger A. Rau‡2 1 University of Göttingen, Germany February 2022 Abstract This paper presents the results of a survey exploring the determinants of vacinees'conﬁdence in COVID-19 vaccines and their motivations to become vaccinated. Atthe threatening rise of the highly infectious Omicron variant, in December 2021, we interviewed people in waiting lines of vaccination centers. Our results identify risk-averse and social-distancing-compliant people as showing high conﬁdence in the vaccine, which motivates them to receive it for reasons of protecting themselves and others. By contrast, policy incentives, such as “3G/2G” restrictions, motivate risktolerant people who opted for vaccination to get access to public areas. Trusting people who regularly vote are little afraid of vaccines' side eﬀects. Our ﬁndings oﬀerinsights for policymakers in societies and ﬁrms that help to tailor policies promoting vaccination based on people's economic preferences. JEL Classiﬁcation numbers: C91, D81, H12, I12, I18 Keywords: Behavioral Economics, COVID-19, Policy Incentives, Vaccination Motives. ∗We are grateful to Hartmut Kliemt and Philipp Löw for their helpful comments. We thank Anika Bittner and Stephanie Nolte for assistance in the data collection. †[claudia.keser@uni-goettingen.de](claudia.keser@uni-goettingen.de), Platz der Göttinger Sieben 3, 37073 Göttingen (Germany) ‡Corresponding author: [holger.rau@uni-goettingen.de](holger.rau@uni-goettingen.de), Platz der Göttinger Sieben 3, 37073 Göttingen (Germany) 1 Introduction The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic causes a severe crisis for societies and the economy. To ﬁght the dissemination of the virus, many states implemented policy measures, such as social-distancing rules, access restrictions, or lockdowns. Compliance to these measures isan important prerequisite for a healthy society and the functioning of labor markets. The pandemic reﬂects a social dilemma, where negative externalities aﬀect the whole society if citizens do not cooperate (Müller and Rau, 2021) . Examples relate to the break-down of the health-care system or the loss of human capital in the labor market, if too many people become seriously ill due to an unlimited spread of the virus (Aum et al. , 2021; Cowan, 2020; Deng et al., 2021) . In the short-run, missing workers lower output, causing gaps in supply chains with high economic costs for industries and the society. High infection rates pose the risk that workers are absent for a long time due to long-term eﬀects of COVID-19, which further increase the costs for the society. Thus, ﬁrms have to minimize periodical absenteeism of employees, stabilizing economic growth in times of the pandemic. In the battle against COVID-19, vaccines are a promising candidate to become a game changer. Importantly, they do not only protect vaccinated persons and their fellow people against infection (Polack et al., 2020), but also they most likely do prevent a serious course of disease and hospitalisation (Juthani et al., 2021) . Due to the social-dilemma structure of the pandemic, vaccination campaigns target at a very high vaccination rate to curb the spread of the virus. However, many countries face the problem that the vaccination rate is too low. In February 2022, it is 64% in the USA, 71% in the UK, and 74% in Germany according to “Our World in Data” (Mathieu et al., 2021) . An important reason for an insuﬃcient vaccination rate in a country is a low degree of acceptance of COVID-19 vaccines among its citizens. Recently, many German federal governments introduced “3G/2G” policies oﬀering access to public areas (e.g., bars and restaurants) only to those people who are vaccinated (

FAQs

What does the survey investigate in this working paper?

It examines determinants of vaccine recipients’ confidence in COVID-19 vaccines and their motivations to become vaccinated.

How were participants recruited and when was the study conducted?

People were interviewed in waiting lines at vaccination centers in December 2021 in Göttingen, during and shortly after the introduction of 2G+-related changes.

Which groups showed higher confidence and what motivated them?

Risk-averse and socially distancing-compliant individuals showed higher confidence, motivated by protecting themselves and others.

How do policy incentives relate to vaccination motivation?

Restriction policies like “3G/2G” motivate risk-tolerant people to get vaccinated in order to access public areas.

Aug 30, 2026

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