Exploring the relationship between framing effects and COVID-19 vaccination intentions: a systematic review

The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in significant global health and economic consequences, highlighting the need for effective public health communication relating to COVID-19 vaccination. One such strategy is the use of gain-loss framing, which emphasises the potential benefits or losses associated with vaccination. This systematic review aims to explore the impact of gain-loss framing on COVID-19 vaccination intentions. An extensive search was carried out across a range of databases including Scopus, PubMed, PsycINFO, and Google Scholar to identify relevant studies for inclusion. Quality assessment was conducted using power analysis to estimate the sample size needs, and subsequently analysed for Risk of Bias using the Covidence Risk Assessment Template (modified Cochrane Risk of Bias tool). This resulted in the identification of 16 relevant studies. The findings reveal that loss-framed messages showed overall greater effectiveness than gain-framed messages in promoting vaccination intentions. Furthermore, although loss-framing demonstrated greater effectiveness, any type of framing included in a message was found to be more effective than no framing at all. In addition, the effectiveness of gain-loss framing may be dependent on several factors, such as partisan media use, travel desire, vaccination attitudes and perceived benefits. These findings have important implications for the implementation of effective vaccination campaigns and guide government response to future public health crises. Keywords: vaccination intention, gain-loss framing, message framing, prospect theory, COVID-19 pandemicBachelor of Social Sciences in Psycholog