In our data, none of the three proxies for pandemic severity and/or visibility is statistically associated with vaccine hesitancy with the exception of COVID-19 excess deaths, where in countries in the second tercile of the excess deaths distribution vaccine hesitancy is, on average, lower, relative to the bottom tercile baseline.

We also test whether trust in the government in general is associated with COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy, expecting a positive association due to widespread reporting of misinformation and antivax messages reported in the press, especially online. However, this association is not statistically significant in the regression model.

Finally, we also disaggregate the vaccine hesitant population into those who say that they would not get a COVID-19 vaccine and those who are not sure (see Figure 5) and consider whether the underlying characteristics of these two subgroups differ. In order to do so, we consider vaccine hesitancy as being a spectrum that spans from a rejection of the vaccine to the acceptance of the vaccine, with uncertainty being an intermediate category. This allows us to model the vaccine decision as an ordinal model, keeping the extended specification from table 1 (see Table 5b in the Appendix). When we examine the correlates of the “No” and the “Not sure” groups separately, we observe similar patterns, but they are much weaker in terms of magnitudes for the “Not sure” group. For instance, lower levels of education are associated with a higher probability of answering No, and this is true for the Not sure group, but the magnitude of the marginal effects is much smaller for the latter. Likewise, the probability of answering “Not sure” is also higher among the working age and older population, relative to those under the age of 35, but the strength of these negative correlations is considerably smaller. The ECA, MNA and EAP regions have a higher probability of both No and Not sure answers relative to the LAC region baseline.

# _3d. Changes in vaccine hesitancy over time_

Estimates of vaccine hesitancy were available for two or more survey rounds in 14 countries in the sample. Seven countries had estimates from two survey rounds (Burkina Faso, Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Nigeria, Philippines, and Uganda) and seven countries (The Gambia, Georgia, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Malawi, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan) had results from three or more survey rounds. All surveys were collected between October 2020 and August 2021, although the specific months of data collection varied across countries.

There are no clear patterns in terms of the changes in vaccine hesitancy in countries with multiple data points over the pandemic. Among the 14 countries with two or more surveys (collected between October 2020 and August 2021), the rates of COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy declined in half of the countries and increased in the other half, and changes in either direction were less than five percentage points in all but three countries (Figure 5 and see Appendix Table 6 for point estimates and confidence intervals). However, larger increases were observed in Iraq (30% increase), Malawi (36% increase), and Uzbekistan (18% increase). No patterns of change over time were observed across sub-populations either. It should be noted, however, that the period for which multiple rounds of the phone surveys are available is relatively short, and during this time very few countries experienced substantial increases in vaccination rates, such that individuals would have few in-person experiences from which to model behavior.

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