Targeting vaccine information framing to recipients' education: a randomized trial

We study the effect of framing informational campaigns scientifically or emotionally on the vaccination uptake of recipients with different educational backgrounds. 7616 Swedish mothers stratified by education received a leaflet on their children's upcoming HPV vaccination opportunity. The leaflet's framing was randomized between emotional and scientific, whereas the content remained uniform; control units received an uninformative reminder of the same length. We find substantial heterogeneity by educational background. Mothers with compulsory schooling exposed to scientific framing increased their uptake by 5.7 percentage points (7.25%). The effect was driven by less skeptical mothers with little previous HPV knowledge and higher engagement with the materials. Emotional framing decreased uptake by 4.8 percentage points (5.41%) among high school‐educated mothers who read more superficially and were more hesitant at baseline.