Doubt in store: vaccine hesitancy among grocery workers during the COVID-19 pandemic

The objective of this study was to assess the influence of workplace safety conditions alongside the World Health Organization’s model of the “3 Cs”, on grocery store workers’ vaccine hesitancy concerning COVID-19. Data for this study come from the Arizona Frontline Workers Survey, a longitudin web-based survey of 770 grocery store workers in the state of Arizona (US) collected in July 2020 and January 2021. We utilized ordinary least squares and multinomial logistic regression analyses to assess predictors of hesitancy at our Wave 2. Thirty-nine percent of our sample reported being unlikely to get vaccinated against COVID-19. Two aspects of the “3 Cs” model, confidence and convenience, were correlated with lower levels of vaccine hesitancy while the perceptions of being protected by one’s employer increased hesitancy. Our findings underscore the importance of workplace conditions for vaccine hesitancy and the need to include vaccine messaging in employers’ safety practices.