{"title":"Vaccination and Collective Action Under Social Norms.","authors":"Bryce Morsky","doi":"10.1007/s11538-025-01436-y","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Social dynamics are an integral part of the spread of disease affecting contact rates as well as the adoption of pharmaceutical and non-pharmaceutical interventions. When vaccines provide waning immunity, efficient and timely uptake of boosters is required to maintain protection and reduce infections. How then do social dynamics affect the timely uptake of vaccines and thereby the course of an epidemic? This paper explores this scenario through a behavioural-epidemiological model. It features a tipping-point dynamic for the uptake of vaccines that combines the risk of infection, perceived morbidity risk of the vaccine, and social payoffs for deviating from the vaccination decision-making of others. The social payoffs are derived from a social norm of conformity, and they create a collective action problem. A key finding driven by this dilemma is that waves of vaccine uptake and infections can occur due to inefficient and delayed uptake of boosters. This results in a nonlinear response of the infection load to the transmission rate: an intermediate transmission rate can result in greater prevalence of disease relative to more or less transmissible diseases. Further, global information about the prevalence of the disease and vaccine uptake can increase the infection load and peak relative to information restricted to individuals' contact networks. Thus, decisions driven by local information can mitigate the collective action problem across the population. Finally, the optimal public policy program to promote boosters is shown to be one that focuses on overcoming the social inertia to vaccinate at the start of an epidemic.</p>","PeriodicalId":9372,"journal":{"name":"Bulletin of Mathematical Biology","volume":"87 5","pages":"55"},"PeriodicalIF":2.0000,"publicationDate":"2025-03-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Bulletin of Mathematical Biology","FirstCategoryId":"100","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11538-025-01436-y","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"数学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"BIOLOGY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Social dynamics are an integral part of the spread of disease affecting contact rates as well as the adoption of pharmaceutical and non-pharmaceutical interventions. When vaccines provide waning immunity, efficient and timely uptake of boosters is required to maintain protection and reduce infections. How then do social dynamics affect the timely uptake of vaccines and thereby the course of an epidemic? This paper explores this scenario through a behavioural-epidemiological model. It features a tipping-point dynamic for the uptake of vaccines that combines the risk of infection, perceived morbidity risk of the vaccine, and social payoffs for deviating from the vaccination decision-making of others. The social payoffs are derived from a social norm of conformity, and they create a collective action problem. A key finding driven by this dilemma is that waves of vaccine uptake and infections can occur due to inefficient and delayed uptake of boosters. This results in a nonlinear response of the infection load to the transmission rate: an intermediate transmission rate can result in greater prevalence of disease relative to more or less transmissible diseases. Further, global information about the prevalence of the disease and vaccine uptake can increase the infection load and peak relative to information restricted to individuals' contact networks. Thus, decisions driven by local information can mitigate the collective action problem across the population. Finally, the optimal public policy program to promote boosters is shown to be one that focuses on overcoming the social inertia to vaccinate at the start of an epidemic.
期刊介绍:
The Bulletin of Mathematical Biology, the official journal of the Society for Mathematical Biology, disseminates original research findings and other information relevant to the interface of biology and the mathematical sciences. Contributions should have relevance to both fields. In order to accommodate the broad scope of new developments, the journal accepts a variety of contributions, including:
Original research articles focused on new biological insights gained with the help of tools from the mathematical sciences or new mathematical tools and methods with demonstrated applicability to biological investigations
Research in mathematical biology education
Reviews
Commentaries
Perspectives, and contributions that discuss issues important to the profession
All contributions are peer-reviewed.