Psychological profiles of COVID vaccine-hesitant individuals and implications for vaccine message design strategies

COVID-19 has caused tremendous consequences in the U.S., and combating the pandemic requires a sig-nificant number of Americans to receive COVID-19 vaccines. Guided by prominent health communication theories, this project took a formative evaluation approach and employed a national sample (N = 1041) in the U.S. to explore the potential differences between vaccine-inclined vs.-hesitant individuals and to generate profiles of hesitant individuals as the foundation for audience segmentation and message tar-geting. Five distinct profiles emerged in the sample. Characteristics of each profile were described, and appropriate messaging strategies were identified to target each group. Theoretical and practical implica-tions were discussed.Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creative-commons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).