Understanding COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy Through an Organizational Behaviour Lens

Yasir H Khan; Drew MacNeil; Jessica Bigelow; Melissa-Zoraya Corvalan Cifuentes; Christine Rottar

doi:10.7759/cureus.29459

Understanding COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy Through an Organizational Behaviour Lens

Cureus. 2022 Sep 22;14(9):e29459. doi: 10.7759/cureus.29459. eCollection 2022 Sep.

Authors

Yasir H Khan^{1

2}, Drew MacNeil¹, Jessica Bigelow¹, Melissa-Zoraya Corvalan Cifuentes¹, Christine Rottar¹

Affiliations

¹ Faculty of Health Sciences - Healthcare Quality Program, Queen's University, Kingston, CAN.
² Department of Family and Community Medicine, University of Toronto, Toronto, CAN.

Abstract

Vaccine hesitancy during the COVID-19 pandemic has been a worldwide public health challenge. Organizational behaviour, the study of people's behaviours in organizational settings, can be used to identify the behavioural drivers contributing to vaccine hesitancy and to develop targeted strategies to combat those drivers and improve vaccine uptake. Some common behaviours driving vaccine hesitancy arise from individualism, motivation, attitude, perception, groupthink, heuristics and cognitive bias. Organizational behaviour strategies to combat vaccine hesitancy include fostering a collectivist attitude, overcoming personal barriers to communication such as individual beliefs and values, utilizing motivation theories to target the individualistic mindset, and overcoming attitudes and perceptions by addressing heuristics and cognitive biases.

Keywords: cognitive bias; covid-19 retro; groupthink; individualism; motivation; organizational behaviour; perception; vaccine hesitancy.

Publication types

Editorial