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Conventional vaccine risk communication, which emphasizes scientific facts about vaccine or disease risks, often overlooks laypeople's values and fails to increase vaccination acceptance. This study developed and tested a participant-informed, value-embedded narrative intervention to improve vaccination acceptance among Hong Kong parents and adults. Two message types were created: a standard message framing vaccines as a medical technology (Med-Tech) and a naturalness-oriented framing (Immune-Trainer), both incorporated narrative communication and imagination simulation. In Study 1, 631 parents were randomly assigned to control, Med-Tech, or Immune-Trainer groups. The Immune-Trainer group showed more positive affective attitudes, generated more naturalness-related cues, and reported higher intention and uptake of childhood influenza vaccination. Study 2, involving 2261 adults and an additional non-narrative, fact-based-only group, largely replicated these findings except for actual uptake. Immune-Trainer outperformed the fact-based-only messages. Significant effects on vaccination intentions and reported actual uptake were observed for influenza but not for COVID-19 vaccination across both samples.
Yuan et al. (Tue,) studied this question.