IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cog/poango/v10y2022i4p168-176.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

When Believing in Divine Immanence Explains Vaccine Hesitancy: A Matter of Conspiracy Beliefs?

Author

Listed:
  • Riccardo Ladini

    (Department of Social and Political Sciences, University of Milan, Italy)

  • Cristiano Vezzoni

    (Department of Social and Political Sciences, University of Milan, Italy)

Abstract

This article analyzes the relationship between religiosity and vaccine hesitancy by highlighting the role of a specific dimension of religiosity that makes some people more prone to explaining health conditions as a divine agency—the belief in the immanent presence of the divine in everyday life. Accordingly, these people may undervalue the role of vaccination as a solution to cope with a pandemic and may be more skeptical of vaccines. We suggest a mechanism explaining the relationship between religiosity and vaccine hesitancy by focusing on the mediating role of beliefs in conspiracy theories, given that belief in divine immanence and conspiracy theories share the common trait of attributing agency to hidden forces. Beliefs in conspiracy theories, in turn, have been shown to be among the strongest predictors of vaccine hesitancy. By using a moderated mediation analysis on Italian survey data collected during the Covid-19 pandemic, we show that such a mechanism helps explain the relationship between believing in divine immanence and vaccine hesitancy among people not adhering to institutional religiosity. In contrast, this mechanism does not apply when the immanent conception of the divine is framed within a system of beliefs belonging to institutional religion.

Suggested Citation

  • Riccardo Ladini & Cristiano Vezzoni, 2022. "When Believing in Divine Immanence Explains Vaccine Hesitancy: A Matter of Conspiracy Beliefs?," Politics and Governance, Cogitatio Press, vol. 10(4), pages 168-176.
    • Handle: RePEc:cog:poango:v:10:y:2022:i:4:p:168-176
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/politicsandgovernance/article/view/5766
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Makarovs, Kirils & Achterberg, Peter, 2017. "Contextualizing educational differences in “vaccination uptake”: A thirty nation survey," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 188(C), pages 1-10.
    2. Streefland, Pieter H., 2001. "Public doubts about vaccination safety and resistance against vaccination," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 55(3), pages 159-172, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Gabriel Andrade & Ahmed Banibella Abdelmagied Elamin & Dalia Bedewy, 2024. "Just-world beliefs are associated with influenza vaccine intake intent in the United Arab Emirates: a cross-sectional study," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 11(1), pages 1-13, December.
    2. Oliver Fernando Hidalgo & Alexander Yendell, 2022. "The Role of Religions and Conspiracy Theories in Democratic and Authoritarian Regimes," Politics and Governance, Cogitatio Press, vol. 10(4), pages 132-134.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Sonja Merten & Adriane Martin Hilber & Christina Biaggi & Florence Secula & Xavier Bosch-Capblanch & Pem Namgyal & Joachim Hombach, 2015. "Gender Determinants of Vaccination Status in Children: Evidence from a Meta-Ethnographic Systematic Review," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(8), pages 1-19, August.
    2. Makarovs, Kirils & Achterberg, Peter, 2017. "Contextualizing educational differences in “vaccination uptake”: A thirty nation survey," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 188(C), pages 1-10.
    3. ten Kate, Josje & de Koster, Willem & van der Waal, Jeroen, 2022. "Becoming skeptical towards vaccines: How health views shape the trajectories following health-related events," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 293(C).
    4. Nik Stoop & Marijke Verpoorten & Koen Deconinck, 2019. "Voodoo, Vaccines, and Bed Nets," Economic Development and Cultural Change, University of Chicago Press, vol. 67(3), pages 493-535.
    5. Jun Wang & Yang Bai & Jingmin Zhu & Xueyao Wang & Yue Che & Jue Liu, 2022. "Association between Social Integration, Social Exclusion, and Vaccination Behavior among Internal Migrants in China: A Cross-Sectional Study," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(13), pages 1-15, June.
    6. Benyun Shi & Guangliang Liu & Hongjun Qiu & Yu-Wang Chen & Shaoliang Peng, 2019. "Voluntary Vaccination through Perceiving Epidemic Severity in Social Networks," Complexity, Hindawi, vol. 2019, pages 1-13, February.
    7. Angelica M Maineri & Peter Achterberg & Ruud Luijkx, 2023. "The Closing Educational Gap in E-privacy Management in European Perspective," Sociological Research Online, , vol. 28(1), pages 37-57, March.
    8. Berezin, Mabel & Eads, Alicia, 2016. "Risk is for the rich? Childhood vaccination resistance and a Culture of Health," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 165(C), pages 233-245.
    9. Francesco Feri & Paolo Pin, 2020. "Externalities Aggregation In Network Games," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 61(4), pages 1635-1658, November.
    10. Iddrisu Amadu & Charles Atanga Adongo, 2022. "Climate Action (Goal 13): The role of climate beliefs, health security and tourism prioritisation in 30 Sub-Saharan African countries," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 171(3), pages 1-25, April.
    11. Bing Li & Ziye Xiang, 2023. "Evolutionary Game of Vaccination Considering Both Epidemic and Economic Factors by Infectious Network of Complex Nodes," Mathematics, MDPI, vol. 11(12), pages 1-26, June.
    12. Luyten, Jeroen & Kessels, Roselinde & Atkins, Katherine E. & Jit, Mark & van Hoek, Albert Jan, 2019. "Quantifying the public's view on social value judgments in vaccine decision-making: A discrete choice experiment," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 228(C), pages 181-193.
    13. Blume, Stuart, 2006. "Anti-vaccination movements and their interpretations," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 62(3), pages 628-642, February.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cog:poango:v:10:y:2022:i:4:p:168-176. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: António Vieira (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.