Ethical Attitudes toward COVID-19 Passports: Evidences from Spain

Abstract

A so-called COVID-19 passport or Immunity passport (IP) has been proposed to facilitate the mobility of individuals while the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic persists. A COVID-19 passport can play a key role in the control of the pandemic, specifically in areas with a high density of population, and the help of smart city technology could be very useful to successfully implement IPs. This research studies the impact of ethical judgments on user attitudes toward using vaccine passports based on a Multidimensional Ethics Scale (MES) that contains five ethical constructs: moral equity, relativism, egoism, utilitarianism, and contractualism. Regression analysis shows that MES satisfactorily explains attitude (R2 = 87.82%, p < 0.001) and that a positive evaluation in moral equity, egoism and utilitarianism is significant (p < 0.001). The objective of the passport (variable leisure) shows a significant negative moderating effect on moral equity (coefficient = −0.147, p = 0.0302) and a positive one on relativism (coefficient = 0.158, p = 0.0287). Adjustment by means of fsQCA shows that five ethical constructs satisfactorily explain both favorable and unfavorable attitudes toward IPs. Solutions explaining acceptance attain an overall consistency (cons) = 0.871 and coverage (cov) = 0.980. In the case of resistance, we found that cons = 0.979 and cov = 0.775. However, that influence is asymmetrical. To have a positive attitude toward the passport, it is a sufficient condition to attain a positive evaluation on a single ethical factor. On the other hand, when explaining resistance, and with the exception of the recipe ~utilitarianism (cons = 0.911 and cov = 0.859), explanatory prime implications require the interaction of at least two variables. Likewise, the context in which the passport is required is significant to explain rejection.