Public attitude toward Covid-19 vaccination: The influence of education, partisanship, biological literacy, and coronavirus understanding

The Covid-19 pandemic posed new issues about vaccination and contagious diseases that had not been the focus of public policy debate in the United States since the tuberculosis pandemic of the late 19th century and the early 20th century. Using a national address-based probability sample of American adults in 2020 and a structural equation model, this analysis seeks to understand the role of education, age, gender, race, education, partisanship, religious fundamentalism, biological literacy, and understanding of the coronavirus to predict individual intention concerning taking the Covid-19 vaccine. Given the substantial changes in the United States since the tuberculosis pandemic, it is important to understand the factors that drive acceptance and hesitancy about Covid-19 vaccination. We find that education, biological literacy, and understanding of the coronavirus were strong positive predictors of willingness to be vaccinated and religious fundamentalism and conservative partisanship were strong negative predictors of intent to vaccinate. These results should be encouraging to the scientific community.