Information Delivered by a Chatbot Has a Positive Impact on COVID-19 Vaccines Attitudes and Intentions

Public Significance Statement Interacting a few minutes with a chatbot answering the most common questions about COVID-19 vaccines increased people's intention to get vaccinated and had a positive impact on their attitudes toward the vaccines. Chatbots could be a powerful resource to fight COVID-19 vaccines hesitancy. The Coronavirus disease; COVID-19 vaccines will not end the pandemic if they stay in freezers. In many countries, such as France, COVID-19 vaccines hesitancy is high. It is crucial that governments make it as easy as possible for people who want to be vaccinated to do so, but also that they devise communication strategies to address the concerns of vaccine hesitant individuals. We introduce and test on 701 French participants a novel messaging strategy: A chatbot that answers people's questions about COVID-19 vaccines. We find that interacting with this chatbot for a few minutes significantly increases people's intentions to get vaccinated (ss = 0.12) and has a positive impact on their attitudes toward COVID-19 vaccination (ss = 0.23). Our results suggest that a properly scripted and regularly updated chatbot could offer a powerful resource to help fight hesitancy toward COVID-19 vaccines.