hesitancy toward COVID-19 vaccines was not particularly high in Romania at the beginning of the vaccination campaign. Nevertheless, the country became one of the laggards in the European Union in terms of vaccination rates. We aim to provide an empirical explanation for this phenomenon based on a representative survey conducted in November–December 2021. We test the influence of various factors on vaccine hesitancy, such as personal experiences with the disease, trust in relevant institutions, general worldviews, and the contact with certain institutions, such as the Romanian Orthodox Church, and general practitioners. Furthermore, we find that three COVID-specific cognitive factors played a crucial role in this respect, namely the evaluation of anti-COVID state measures, belief in COVID-related conspiracy theories, and, especially, fears of negative effects of COVID-19 vaccines. The high explanatory power of these three factors also shows that low vaccination rates were not inevitable consequences of some “inherent” attitudinal characteristics widespread in the Romanian society; on the contrary, vaccine hesitancy has developed as an unfortunate side effect of weak crisis management, as the government and relevant state institutions failed to properly utilize key organizational resources, such as the national network of general practitioners, and proved to be unable to dissipate fears and countervail the spread of conspiracy theories, while emergency measures did not resonate enough among the Romanian public.

中文翻译：

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固有的态度还是错误的政策？罗马尼亚对 COVID-19 疫苗犹豫不决的原因

在疫苗接种活动开始时，罗马尼亚对 COVID-19 疫苗的犹豫并不是特别强烈。尽管如此，该国在疫苗接种率方面却成为欧盟的落后者之一。我们的目标是根据 2021 年 11 月至 12 月进行的一项代表性调查为这一现象提供实证解释。我们测试了各种因素对疫苗犹豫的影响，例如个人的疾病经历、对相关机构的信任、普遍的世界观以及对疫苗犹豫的影响。与某些机构（如罗马尼亚东正教教堂）和全科医生的联系。此外，我们发现三个特定于新冠病毒的认知因素在这方面发挥了至关重要的作用，即对抗新冠病毒国家措施的评估、对新冠病毒相关阴谋论的信仰，以及尤其是对新冠病毒疫苗负面影响的恐惧。这三个因素的强大解释力还表明，低疫苗接种率并不是罗马尼亚社会普遍存在的某些“固有”态度特征的必然结果；相反，对疫苗的犹豫已成为危机管理薄弱的一个不幸的副作用，因为政府和相关国家机构未能正确利用关键的组织资源，例如全国全科医生网络，并被证明无法消除恐惧并遏制阴谋论的传播，而紧急措施并没有在罗马尼亚公众中引起足够的共鸣。