Human Vaccines & Immunotherapeutics

Understanding and Improving Vaccination Behaviour: Emerging Challenges, Behavioural Insights, and Interventions

Human Vaccines & Immunotherapeutics is pleased to welcome you to submit your research to the Article Collection "Understanding and Improving Vaccination Behaviour: Emerging Challenges, Behavioural Insights, and Interventions".

Vaccination behaviour is a dynamic and multifaceted phenomenon that extends beyond the decision to accept or refuse a vaccine. It encompasses how individuals perceive vaccination, form intentions, make decisions, initiate vaccination, and complete recommended schedules. These behaviours are shaped by interacting psychological, social, cultural, informational, and structural influences, including risk perception, trust and confidence, health beliefs, social norms, healthcare provider recommendations, accessibility, and exposure to vaccine-related information. Importantly, these determinants may change over time and vary across vaccines, populations, communities, and health systems. The introduction of new vaccines and vaccine technologies, emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases, and rapidly evolving digital information environments further create new challenges for vaccination behaviour. Behavioural and social science approaches are therefore essential for identifying modifiable determinants, understanding the gap between vaccination intention and actual uptake, and informing targeted interventions that strengthen vaccine confidence, support informed decision-making, and improve vaccination uptake.

Understanding and improving vaccination behaviour is increasingly important as vaccine programmes face challenges that extend beyond vaccine availability. Hesitancy, declining confidence, misinformation, unequal access, and the gap between vaccination intention and actual uptake can limit the population-level impact of immunization programmes. These challenges may be particularly important for newly introduced vaccines, vaccines targeting populations outside routine childhood programmes, and vaccination during emerging infectious disease outbreaks. Identifying the behavioural and contextual factors underlying vaccination decisions can help explain why conventional information-based approaches may not always lead to behaviour change. Evidence from behavioural research can inform more targeted, culturally appropriate, and context-specific strategies that address the needs and concerns of different populations. Importantly, translating behavioural insights into interventions and implementation strategies can help strengthen vaccine confidence, facilitate informed decision-making, reduce barriers to vaccination, and improve initiation and completion of recommended vaccination, ultimately enhancing the effectiveness and resilience of immunization programmes.

This Article Collection invites research that advances understanding of vaccination behaviour and translates behavioural insights into strategies to improve vaccine acceptance and uptake. Topics of interest include vaccine confidence and hesitancy; determinants of vaccine acceptance, intention, initiation, and completion; the intention–behaviour gap; risk perception and health beliefs; trust in vaccines, healthcare professionals, and health systems; social and cultural influences on vaccination; misinformation and vaccine communication; social media and digital influences; healthcare provider recommendations and behaviours; and barriers and facilitators to vaccination. Studies evaluating behavioural, communication, digital, community-based, and health-system interventions to improve vaccination uptake are particularly encouraged. Research across different vaccines, populations, life stages, cultural settings, and emerging or re-emerging infectious disease contexts is welcomed, including comparative and multidisciplinary studies. The Collection welcomes Research Articles, Review Articles, Methods, Rapid Communications, and Article Commentaries, consistent with the journal’s accepted article types.

Keywords: Vaccination behaviour; Vaccine confidence; Vaccine hesitancy; Vaccine uptake; Behavioural interventions

Meet the Guest Advisors

Prof. Dr. Li Ping Wong is a Professor of Behavioral Epidemiology in the Department of Social and Preventive Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, Universiti Malaya. Trained in Malaysia, she obtained her PhD from Universiti Malaya in 2004. She is an internationally recognised scholar in behavioural epidemiology and social behavioural medicine, with research spanning over two decades on how human behaviour, beliefs, and social contexts shape health outcomes.

Dr. Lee Hai Yen (Natasha) is an Associate Professor and Deputy Executive Director (Research and Innovation) at TIDREC, Universiti Malaya, and a microbiologist and vaccinologist. Her research interests include mRNA vaccine development, bioprocess development, and spore-based vaccine platforms against multidrug-resistant pathogens. She also studies vaccine acceptance and public confidence across Malaysia and Asia.

Dr. Yulan Lin is an Associate Professor and Master’s Supervisor at the School of Public Health, Fujian Medical University, China. Her research interests include vaccine epidemiology, cancer prevention, and health-related behaviors, with a particular focus on HPV vaccination. She has conducted multiple survey-based studies examining HPV vaccine awareness, attitudes, hesitancy, acceptance, and vaccination intentions among different population groups. Her broader research encompasses upper gastrointestinal cancer screening and prevention, population-based cohort studies, and real-world research using large-scale healthcare data.

Dr. Harapan Harapan is an Associate Professor at the School of Medicine, Universitas Syiah Kuala, Indonesia, with expertise in infectious diseases, vaccinology, epidemiology, and public health. His research focuses on arboviral diseases, vaccine immunology, vaccination behaviour, vaccine acceptance, and strategies to improve immunization uptake, particularly in low- and middle-income settings. He has authored more than 190 scientific publications and has contributed extensively to research on dengue, COVID-19, and other vaccine-preventable and emerging infectious diseases. He is an expert member of the Indonesian Technical Advisory Group on Immunization (ITAGI) and serves in several scientific and editorial roles. His work integrates epidemiological, behavioural, and implementation research to generate evidence that supports vaccination policy and strengthens immunization programmes.