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Title: | Individual Factors Influencing the Public’s Perceptions About the Importance of COVID-19 Immunity Certificates in the United Kingdom: Cross-sectional Web-based Questionnaire Survey |
Authors: | Niculaescu, C-E Sassoon, IK Landa-Avila, IC Colak, O Jun, GT Balatsoukas, P |
Keywords: | immunity passports;immunity certificates;vaccine passports;COVID-19;health belief model;vaccination; pandemic;cross-sectional survey;low income;vulnerable population;socioeconomic;public perception;public policy |
Issue Date: | 27-Apr-2023 |
Publisher: | JMIR Publications |
Citation: | Niculaescu, C.E. et al. (2023) 'Individual Factors Influencing the Public’s Perceptions About the Importance of COVID-19 Immunity Certificates in the United Kingdom: Cross-sectional Web-based Questionnaire Survey', JMIR Formative Research, 7, e37139, pp. 1 - 13. doi: 10.2196/37139. |
Abstract: | Background: Understanding how perceptions around immunity certificates are influenced by individual characteristics is important to inform evidence-based policy making and implementation strategies for services around immunity and vaccine certification. Objective: This study aimed to assess what were the main individual factors influencing people’s perception of the importance of using COVID-19 immunity certificates, including health beliefs about COVID-19, vaccination views, sociodemographics, and lifestyle factors. Methods: A cross-sectional web-based survey with a nationally representative sample in the United Kingdom was conducted on August 3, 2021. Responses were collected and analyzed from 534 participants, aged 18 years and older, who were residents of the United Kingdom. The primary outcome measure (dependent variable) was the participants’ perceived importance of using immunity certificates, computed as an index of 6 items. The following individual drivers were used as the independent variables: (1) personal beliefs about COVID-19 (using constructs adapted from the Health Belief Model), (2) personal views on vaccination, (3) willingness to share immunity status with service providers, and (4) variables related to respondents’ lifestyle and sociodemographic characteristics. Results: The perceived importance of immunity certificates was higher among respondents who felt that contracting COVID-19 would have a severe negative impact on their health (β=0.2564; P<.001) and felt safer if vaccinated (β=0.1552; P<.001). The prospect of future economic recovery positively influenced the perceived importance of immunity certificates. Respondents who were employed or self-employed (β=–0.2412; P=.001) or experienced an increase in income after the COVID-19 pandemic (β=–0.1287; P=.002) perceived the use of immunity certificates as less important compared to those who were unemployed or had retired or those who had experienced a reduction in their income during the pandemic. Conclusions: The findings of our survey suggest that more vulnerable members in our society (those unemployed or retired and those who believe that COVID-19 would have a severe impact on their health) and people who experienced a reduction in income during the pandemic perceived the severity of not using immunity certificates in their daily life as higher. |
Description: | Data Availability: The data is available in a public, open access repository. All materials are freely available on Open Science Framework [22]. |
URI: | https://bura.brunel.ac.uk/handle/2438/29574 |
DOI: | https://doi.org/10.2196/37139 |
Other Identifiers: | ORCiD: Corina-Elena Niculaescu https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8971-0812 ORCiD: Isabel Karen Sassoon https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8971-0812 ORCiD: Irma Cecilia Landa-Avila https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6107-6736 ORCiD: Ozlem Colak https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0813-2561 ORCiD: Gyuchan Thomas Jun https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0958-0107 ORCiD: Panagiotis Balatsoukas https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9051-7633 e37139 |
Appears in Collections: | Dept of Computer Science Research Papers |
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FullText.pdf | Copyright © Corina-Elena Niculaescu, Isabel Karen Sassoon, Irma Cecilia Landa-Avila, Ozlem Colak, Gyuchan Thomas Jun, Panagiotis Balatsoukas. Originally published in JMIR Formative Research (https://formative.jmir.org), 27.04.2023. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work, first published in JMIR Formative Research, is properly cited. The complete bibliographic information, a link to the original publication on https://formative.jmir.org, as well as this copyright and license information must be included. | 855.68 kB | Adobe PDF | View/Open |
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