Political Trust and Covid- 19 Vaccine Hesitancy

Abstract: As vaccines against Covid-19 are being distributed globally the goal is to limit the impact of the disease by achieving herd immunity, and to accomplish this most people need to get vaccinated. Vaccine hesitancy is a challenge to this goal. This thesis investigates whether and how different forms of political trust can be linked to individuals’ willingness to get the Covid-19 vaccine in the first half of 2021. Using data from the Eurobarometer surveys 94.3 from Feb/Mar 2021 (European Commission, 2021a) and 95.3 Jun/Jul 2021 (European Commission, 2021b) together with data from other sources, I perform multilevel regression analyses on the current 27 European Union member states to investigate the links between political trust and Covid-19 vaccine hesitancy. The results suggest that political trust is associated with less vaccine hesitancy, both in the form of institutional trust and trust based on the government’s performance in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. The results suggest that countries with lower levels of political trust can expect vaccine hesitancy to be a bigger challenge to achieve high vaccination coverage.