Social Norms, Conspiracy Theories and Vaccine Scepticism: A Snapshot From the First Year of the COVID-19 Pandemic in Poland

In January 2022, Poland experienced the highest rate of SARS-CoV-2 transmission since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Considering the overwhelming consensus among experts about the efficacy of vaccines in preventing hospitalization and death resulting from the virus, low vaccination rates and widespread anti-vaccine sentiments in Poland are of great concern.  We use data from the DIAGNOZA+ Survey to demonstrate the relationship between various demographic characteristics, opinions around certain gender norms, the propensity for conspiratorial thinking, concern about the pandemic, and vaccine scepticism. While controlling for exogenous demographic characteristics, we measure the strength of the relationship between various beliefs that people hold and how they feel about the COVID-19 vaccine. Our analysis indicates that while respondents who held more traditional views on gender roles were 6 percentage points less likely to get vaccinated, those that agreed with a variety of conspiratorial statements were 43 percentage points less likely to vaccinate against COVID-19.