Demographic Dependence of Vaccine Adoption under Opinion Persuasion

TL;DR

This paper introduces SIS-Vo, a model for vaccine adoption influenced by opinion dynamics on social networks, highlighting how targeted policies can promote health and control misinformation effects.

Contribution

It develops a novel epistemically-informed framework incorporating demographic heterogeneity and opinion influence into epidemic modeling.

Findings

Derived fixed-point characterizations of equilibria and stability conditions.

Showed targeted opinion-based interventions can stabilize the epidemic.

Demonstrated robustness of vaccination policies against misinformation.

Abstract

Inspired by contagion models of social belief formation, we develop an epistemically-informed modeling framework, SIS-Vo, in which vaccine-related information propagates on a signed opinion network. Our model allows for heterogeneous treatment effects of policy messages across subpopulations through demographic-specific responses. We derive fixed-point characterizations of the healthy (disease-free) and endemic equilibria of this model, and obtain conditions for local stability of the healthy state in terms of the contact network and opinion-dependent vaccination capacities. Using numerical simulations, we illustrate how suitably targeted policy interventions, acting through opinion dynamics, can stabilize the epidemic process by moving the system towards the healthy regime. The SIS-Vo framework thus provides a natural basis for control-theoretic analysis of vaccination policies that remain robust even when misinformation targets specific subgroups.