Replication Data for: Resistance to COVID-19 Vaccination and the Social Contract: Evidence from Italy

While demand for COVID-19 vaccines far out-stripped supply in the early stages of the global vaccination campaign, vaccination efforts have since stalled in many parts of the world and significant percentages of the public are still unvaccinated even in countries with universal access. Governments such as Italy have responded with vaccine mandates enforced with steep fines and other measures to incentivize vaccination that exclude the unvaccinated from many aspects of social and economic life. Even still, some citizens have elected not to vaccinate. In this research we advance a social contract framework for understanding who remains unvaccinated and why. We leverage both observational evidence—specifically data on vaccination rates by region, social capital, and COVID-19 fatality rates—as well as individual-level data from an original survey fielded in Italy in March 2022 to study the relationship between trust and reciprocity toward others, institutional commitment to the core structures of society such as the rule of law, and political partisanship. We find that attitudes toward the rule of law and collective commitments outside the domain of vaccination are strongly associated with compliance with vaccine mandates. Partisanship also corresponds with individuals’ vaccine behaviors, as supporters of parties whose leaders have expressed the most skepticism of government efforts to incentivize vaccination are least likely to comply. Our findings suggest that public health campaigns appealing to collective responsibility or reciprocity are unlikely to resonate with these individuals.