Imitation and memory-based self-organizing behaviors under voluntary vaccination

Abstract

Understanding human voluntary vaccinating behaviors plays essential roles in designing incentive-based vaccination programs for public health authorities to eliminate or eradicate an vaccine-preventable disease. Usually, individuals make vaccinating decisions by weighing the cost of vaccination and infection, which can be perceived based on their vaccinating experiences. However, in reality, an individual's decision can also be influenced by others. Along this line, in this paper, we present an imitation and memory-based self-organization mechanism to investigate human voluntary vaccinating behaviors, which takes into consideration both individuals' historical experiences and the impact of social influence. Through carrying out simulations on flu-like seasonal diseases, we evaluate the combined effects of both imitation and memory on the final vaccine coverage level with respect to different relative cost of vaccination and infection. Simulation results show that the imitation-based behavior has a greater impact on public vaccine coverage level than the memory-based rational behavior under voluntary vaccination, which emphasizes the importance of social guidance in disease intervention and control.