疫苗政治化：台灣民眾的政黨認同與新冠疫苗品牌選擇之探討

Abstract

疫苗政治化是許多國家在新冠疫情期間常見的現象。然而，有別於歐美國家在疫苗猶豫上的政治化，台灣的新冠疫苗政治化卻出現在品牌挑選上。植於投票理論以及政黨與疫苗的相關研究，本文認為政黨認同不但會增加民眾對所屬政黨背書新冠疫苗的接種意願，也會使民眾對所屬政黨背書新冠疫苗有較高的品質認知。以民主進步黨對高端疫苗的公開背書為背景，本研究在個體層次的民意調查資料中發現支持本文論點的經驗證據。藉由中介分析，本文也發現政府信任分別是執政黨政黨認同與高端疫苗選擇以及高端疫苗品質認知的顯著中介變數；本篇研究甚至更發現執政黨支持者評價高端疫苗的正面與負面資訊的路徑機制有所不同。總上，本文對於疫苗政治化的比較研究做出了具體的貢獻。

Vaccine politicization was common in many countries during the COVID-19 pandemic. Distinct from Western countries, where the politicization of the COVID vaccine occurred to vaccine hesitancy, Taiwan experienced the politicization of the COVID vaccine brand choice. Building on the theory of voting and related studies on political parties and vaccines, this study argues that individual citizens would be more likely to accept a COVID vaccine brand their affiliated party publicly endorsed and have a higher quality perception of the party-endorsed vaccine. Leveraging the Democratic Progressive Party's public endorsement of the Medigen COVID vaccine during the pandemic as a background, this study finds empirical evidence consistent with the argument from individual-level survey data. Through mediation analyses, this study also shows that trust in government was a robust mediator between the incumbent party identification and the choice of the Medigen COVID-19 vaccine as well as its quality perception, respectively; this study even further finds that the incumbent party supporters formed positive and negative quality perceptions of the Medigen COVID-19 vaccine through distinct causal pathways. To sum up, this thesis contributes to comparative research on vaccine politicization.