No-vaxxers are different in public good games

Abstract

AbstractIn September 2021 we conducted a survey to 1482 people in Italy, when the vaccination campaign against Covid19 was going on. In the first part of the survey we run three simple tests on players’ behavior in standard tasks with monetary incentives to measure their risk attitudes, willingness to contribute to a public good in an experimental game, and their beliefs about others’ behavior. In the second part, we asked respondents if they were vaccinated and, if not, for what reason. We classified as no-vaxxers those (around $$12\%$$ 12 % of the sample) who did not yet start the vaccination process and declared that they intended not to do it in the future. We find that no-vaxxers contribute less to the public good in the experimental game because they trust others less to do so. from the three tests we extrapolated a classification based on the benchmark of rationality and other-regarding preferences for each respondent, and we found that in this respect no-vaxxers do not differ from the rest of the population.