Behavioral determinants for COVID-19 vaccine acceptance among students, faculty, and staff at a rural public university

Sarah Bauler; Adam Hege; Tom Davis; Emilee Schluth; Caroline Pruitt; Victoria Moreno; Monica Verhaeghe; Erin D Bouldin

doi:10.1080/21642850.2022.2074007

Behavioral determinants for COVID-19 vaccine acceptance among students, faculty, and staff at a rural public university

Health Psychol Behav Med. 2022 May 13;10(1):467-479. doi: 10.1080/21642850.2022.2074007. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Sarah Bauler^{1

2

3}, Adam Hege¹, Tom Davis², Emilee Schluth¹, Caroline Pruitt¹, Victoria Moreno¹, Monica Verhaeghe¹, Erin D Bouldin¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Health and Exercise Science, Appalachian State University, Boone, NC, USA.
² World Vision International, Geneva, Switzerland.
³ Bloomberg School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA.

Abstract

Background: Vaccine hesitancy for COVID-19 is a major obstacle to achieving high vaccine coverage. Low vaccine confidence among college students is one factor fueling the COVID-19 pandemic in the U.S.

Objective: The purpose of this study was to evaluate COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy and barriers to vaccine uptake among students, faculty, and staff at a rural public university.

Method: We used the Barrier Analysis (BA) mixed-methods approach, which explores determinants of the desired behavior using the Health Belief Model and Theory of Reasoned Action. We developed a BA questionnaire and distributed it through Qualtrics to 4,600 randomly selected students (n = 4,000), faculty (n = 300), and staff (n = 300) from March 11 to April 1, 2021. We defined Acceptors as those who were willing to be vaccinated and Non-acceptors as those who were not.

Results: Our analysis found that among Non-acceptors, perceived social norms, perceived negative consequences, and trust had the highest association with COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy among students, faculty, and staff.

Conclusion: These findings illustrate the need to develop effective behavior change strategies for COVID-19 vaccines uptake that identify sources of trusted information among vaccine-hesitant college students, faculty, and staff, while leveraging enablers to increase COVID-19 vaccination coverage on university campuses.

Keywords: COVID-19; barrier analysis; behavior; determinants; universities; vaccine hesitancy.

Grants and funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.