Targeting vaccine information framing to recipients’ education : a randomized trial

Abstract

We investigate tailoring information framing to recipients’ backgrounds to boost vaccination uptakes. 7616 Swedish mothers stratified by education and immigration background received a leaflet on their children’s upcoming HPV vaccination opportunity. The leaflet’s framing was randomized between emotional and scientific, with control units receiving an uninformative announcement. Mothers with compulsory schooling exposed to scientific framing increased their uptake by 5.7 percentage points (7.25%). The effect was driven by attentive readers with little previous HPV knowledge. Emotional framing decreased uptake by 4.8 percentage points (5.41%) among high school-educated mothers who read superficially and were more hesitant at baseline.