To do or not to do? Technological and social factors affecting vaccine coverage

This paper investigates the role of crucial technological and social factors in enhancing or undermining vaccine coverage rates at the country level worldwide. Employing five country-level databases, it explores how different combinations of technology diffusion (that is, social media penetration) and social conditions (functional literacy and attitude toward science) affect the level of vaccine coverage. The analyses are based on two built ad-hoc longitudinal datasets of 36 and 40 countries worldwide, employing a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fs-QCA) approach. The findings highlight that, at the country level, the absence of high social media penetration, combined with an above-average level of functional literacy and positive attitude toward science, enable vaccine coverage to reach the level recommended by health institutions and authorities.