Vaccine hesitancy is one of the major obstacles for successfully combating the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. To achieve a sufficiently high vaccination rate, calls for compulsory vaccinations have been discussed controversially. This study analyses what drives citizens’ attitudes towards compulsory vaccination during the COVID-19 pandemic. Specifically, we are interested in the impact of party- and expert cues on public attitudes. We further expect populist attitudes to be an important indicator of the rejection of compulsory vaccination due to their scepticism towards science. To test these expectations, we rely on a cueing experiment conducted on a sample of 2265 German citizens. We test for the effects of in-party and out-party cues as well as public health expert cues. We find evidence for in-party cues, meaning that respondents adjust their position on this issue in the direction of their most preferred party. Similar results can be found for public health expert cues. However, there is no evidence for out-party cues. Further analyses reveal that support for compulsory vaccinations is not affected by left-right placement directly. Instead, only the combination of right-wing attitudes and populism negatively affects support for compulsory vaccination.

疫苗犹豫是成功对抗持续的 COVID-19 大流行的主要障碍之一。为了达到足够高的疫苗接种率，强制接种疫苗的呼吁一直存在争议。本研究分析了在 COVID-19 大流行期间是什么促使公民对强制接种疫苗的态度。具体而言，我们对政党和专家线索对公众态度的影响感兴趣。我们进一步预计，由于对科学持怀疑态度，民粹主义态度将成为拒绝强制接种疫苗的重要指标。为了测试这些期望，我们依靠对 2265 名德国公民的样本进行的提示实验。我们测试了派对内和派对外提示以及公共卫生专家提示的影响。我们找到派对内线索的证据，这意味着受访者会朝着他们最喜欢的一方的方向调整他们在这个问题上的立场。类似的结果可以在公共卫生专家线索中找到。然而，没有证据表明党外线索。进一步的分析表明，对强制接种疫苗的支持不受左右放置的直接影响。相反，只有右翼态度和民粹主义的结合会对强制接种疫苗的支持产生负面影响。