Ninth wave of surveys in December 2021/ January 2022
Results of the 9th survey wave from 23rd of December 2021 to 11th of January 2022
European COvid Survey: Majority for Mandatory Vaccination in Germany
65 percent of people in Germany support mandatory vaccination against COVID-19 for all adults. 60 percent are in favour of mandatory vaccination for all age groups with an already approved vaccine - including children and adolescents. This is the result of the current survey of the representative European COvid Survey, which is regularly conducted by the Hamburg Center for Health Economics (HCHE) of the University of Hamburg.
Mandatory vaccination only for individual groups, such as medical staff, the public service or people with pre-existing conditions and the elderly, achieves around 70 percent approval in each case. "Support for mandatory vaccination therefore seems to be more of a general decision by the people. For whom this ultimately applies plays only a subordinate role," says Prof. Dr. Jonas Schreyögg, scientific director of the HCHE. Basically, the older people are, the more they are in favour of mandatory vaccination. In addition, the approval is greatest in the north and west of Germany. However, about one in six people has not yet reached a clear opinion for or against mandatory vaccination.
Although only one in two is currently satisfied with the management of the vaccination campaign, the willingness to vaccinate in Germany rose to 86 percent, four percentage points more than in September 2021. In the west and south of Germany, the willingness to vaccinate climbed to 90 percent, while the eastern federal states are significantly lower at 77 percent. "We find low values in vaccination readiness especially among people who have little trust in the government," Schreyögg said. In this group, the willingness to vaccinate is only 65 percent.
Of those who have already been vaccinated, 79 percent are willing to be boostered, with the highest figure in western Germany at 84 percent. In the East, however, more than one in five vaccinated persons is against booster vaccination. Among the parents surveyed, 56 percent said they would have their children vaccinated, four percentage points less than in September. Accordingly, 27 percent are against vaccinating their children. In other European countries, there are big differences: in Spain and Portugal, only six and seven percent of parents, respectively, said they would not have their children vaccinated, while in France, 30 percent said they would.
Regardless of the current discussion about a possible mandatory vaccination, 81 percent of the respondents in Germany are concerned about a split between the vaccinated and the unvaccinated. In Denmark, this figure is the lowest among the eight European countries surveyed at 68 percent, followed by Great Britain at 71 percent.
A presentation of the results from all survey waves can be found under the following link: https://www.hche.uni-hamburg.de/corona.html.
Note: The willingness to vaccinate refers to the representative sample of the total population and includes vaccinated and not yet vaccinated respondents.
About the European COvid Survey (ECOS)
For the European COvid Survey (ECOS), 7,000 people in Germany, Denmark, France, the United Kingdom, Italy, the Netherlands and Portugal have been surveyed approximately every two months since April 2020. The aim is to measure the attitudes and concerns of people in Europe about the course of the pandemic. One focus is the topic of vaccination. About half of the respondents have already taken part several times. Some of the questions always remain the same and thus reflect changes over time. In addition, new questions are added that pick up on current events. In the meantime, eight survey waves have taken place; in the last survey in July, Spain was added as a further country. Thus, the number of respondents increased to 8,000. The current survey took place from 23 December 2021 to 11 January 2022.
Cooperation partners:
ECOS is a joint project of the Nova School of Business and Economics (Portugal), Bocconi University (Italy), Erasmus University Rotterdam (Netherlands) and the University of Hamburg (with funding from the Excellence Strategy) and receives funding from the German Research Foundation.