Abstract
Emergency vaccination programs face unique challenges requiring effective social mobilization strategies, yet comprehensive evaluations of mobilization effectiveness across population settings and temporal phases remain limited. This cross-sectional study conducted from September 2024 to January 2025 included 3048 healthcare workers and 3722 non-healthcare workers in China using multi-stage stratified sampling across eastern, central, and western regions. Participants retrospectively evaluated vaccination attitudes across three COVID-19 vaccination phases: pre-mobilization (2020), in-mobilization (2021-2022), and post-mobilization (2023). Healthcare workers showed increased vaccination willingness in-mobilization (53.5% to 56.2%, p < 0.05), while non-healthcare workers demonstrated sustained increases from 45.1% to 48.1% and 46.5% (p < 0.05). In-mobilization, collective responsibility remained the strongest predictor for healthcare workers (OR = 2.69, 95% CI: 1.85-3.89), while social identity emerged for non-healthcare workers (OR = 3.24, 95% CI: 2.10-4.99). These findings suggest that association between social mobilization and vaccination willingness depends on population-specific intervention strategies acknowledging distinct motivational frameworks and temporal dynamics in emergency vaccination contexts.
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The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
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Acknowledgements
This study was supported by National Social Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 22BGL246). The funders played no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
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Q.X., X.Z., and F.C. conceptualized the study and designed the analytical framework; T.X., H.W., Y.C., H.T., and Y.W. contributed to the data collection and collation; Q.X. contributed to the data analysis; F.C. and L.Q. provided administrative, technical, and material support, supervision, and mentorship; All authors contributed to writing the report and critical revision of the manuscript.
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Xu, Q., Zhang, X., Xie, T. et al. Evaluation of the effectiveness of social mobilization for vaccination among healthcare and non-healthcare workers in emergency situations. npj Vaccines (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41541-026-01392-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41541-026-01392-1
