The willingness of Chinese adults to receive the COVID-19 vaccine and its associated factors at the early stage of the vaccination programme: a network analysis

Background: The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has been a continuous global threat since the first identification of the disease in December 2019. COVID-19 vaccination is a crucial preventive approach that can halt this pandemic. However, many factors affect the willingness of the public to be vaccinated against COVID-19 at the early stage of the vaccination programme. We used network analysis to investigate the interrelation of vaccination willingness and its associated factors. Methods: A population-representative sample of 539 Chinese adults completed a battery of online self-assessments, including those on vaccination willingness, health status, attitude towards vaccines, COVID-19 related psychological elements and other variables. Network analysis was performed using the R agrctpli package. Results: In total, 445 (82.6%) participants scored high on their willingness to vaccinate. Attitude towards vaccines, the influence of people around an individual and health status were directly significantly related to vaccination willingness. The betweenness of age was the highest and, the emotional states had the strongest centrality. Limitations: Network analysis is not sufficient to determine the causal relationships of the links between nodes. In addition, there are other latent essential elements that were not evaluated. Finally, the sample size was relatively small. Conclusion: Network analysis showed that attitude toward vaccines and emotional states are the most critical factors affecting vaccination willingness, which indicates that we should pay attention to the impact of the dissemination of Internet information on vaccination willingness and public emotional states during a pandemic which is very important for promoting vaccination programs.