Vaccine-Hesitant Consumers Care About Side-Effects

New study shows that UK and USA consumers want a free and effective COVID-19 vaccine, and care more about effectiveness and accessibility than risk of side-effects.

SYDNEY, May 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ — Market research software company Conjoint.ly today released results from its recent Consumer Preferences for COVID-19 Vaccine conjoint analysis survey, revealing that vaccine-hesitant consumers in the UK and US are most likely to be swayed by a fully-subsidised vaccine that has at least 85% effectiveness – comparable to results from a similar Chinese study.

Conjoint.ly’s research, conducted between 31 March and 5 April 2021, takes inspiration from academics Leng et al‘s January 2020 conjoint study Individual preferences for COVID-19 vaccination in China, which also found that Chinese respondents are more willing to take the vaccine if it is free and highly effective.

“Countries around the world face similar challenges with vaccine rollouts. We were intrigued by conjoint research from China around factors of vaccine adoption. Our research showed that communicating vaccine effectiveness works well to convince people to take the jab in the West, as it does in the East,” said Conjoint.ly’s Founder, Nik Samoylov.

Both studies assessed respondents’ vaccine preferences based on several factors, such as effectiveness and accessibility to determine which vaccine characteristics would encourage the highest uptake rates in each country.

The conjoint surveys also presented respondents with choices surrounding risk of side-effects, duration of protection, number of doses required, and number of acquaintances already vaccinated.