Information sharing can suppress the spread of epidemics: Voluntary vaccination game on two-layer networks

It is known that the vaccination is essential for suppressing the periodic prevalence of an infectious disease, while the vaccination decision is influenced by external factors. Whether or not to take vaccination depends not only on the expected benefit of individual, but also on the behavior of others. Nowadays, the speed of information transmission on the social media is fast with wide range, which extremely expands the scope of imitation, but it is unknown whether it is beneficial to vaccination. Inspired by this situation, a vaccination game model on two-layer network which increases the intensity of information sharing is proposed. The vaccination game layer and the information sharing layer are established to study the interaction between individual vaccination decisions and strategic exchanges. We find that although information sharing has inhibited individual vaccination decisions to some extent, the overall scale of disease spreading in society has decreased with increasing information sharing. (c) 2021 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Automated summary

Vaccination decisions are influenced by individual benefits and the behavior of others; fast information transmission on social media expands the scope of imitation; information sharing can inhibit individual vaccination decisions to some extent, but overall beneficial for reducing the scale of disease spreading in society.