Vaccine Decision Making in New Zealand: a Discrete Choice Experiment

Vaccine hesitancy is a significant threat to global health. A key part of addressing hesitancy is to ensure that public health messaging prioritises information that is considered important to the public. This study aimed to examine how different vaccine characteristics affect public preferences for vaccines in New Zealand, what trade-offs they are willing to make between different vaccine characteristics, and how their preferences are affected by their vaccine-related conspiracy beliefs and COVID-19 vaccination status. An online discrete choice experiment (DCE) was designed to elicit individual preferences about vaccines using the 1000minds platform. Members of the general population of New Zealand aged ≥ 18 years were invited to complete the DCE. Participants were asked to indicate their preference between two options showing different combinations of vaccine characteristics. Data on sociodemographic characteristics were collected. Beliefs were measured using the vaccine conspiracy beliefs scale (VCBS) with scores ≥ 19 indicating strong vaccine-related conspiracy beliefs. The DCE was analysed using the PAPRIKA method (Potentially All Pairwise RanKings of all possible Alternatives) and preferences compared between respondents with high versus low VCBS scores and vaccinated versus unvaccinated respondents for COVID-19. A total of 611 respondents from 15 regions completed the DCE. Mean (SD) age was 45.9 (14.7) years with most having had 2 or more doses of the coronavirus vaccine (86