COVID-19 Vaccine Communication Campaigns: A Cross-Country Analysis Based on Hofstede Cultural Dimensions

COVID-19 vaccination campaigns provided a substantial contribution to the management of the pandemic. This paper aims to assess the success of COVID-19 vaccine communication campaigns in different countries, relying on Hofstede’s cultural dimension framework. The main objective of the paper is to find out the critical success factors of national communication campaigns. A case study analysis is conducted in a sample of Countries where vaccines are widely available free of charge and national communication campaigns have been used to stimulate citizens’ adhesion. Critical success factors of national strategies in terms of adopted media use and media formats, message type, adopted tone of voice and influencers’ role are identified and compared to the country’s cultural elements. The analysis suggests that the most successful communication campaign strategies, are those where the government and institutions tried to remain coherent and preserve the population cultural traits.