Covid-19 vaccine uptake: the role of civic capital to overcome the free rider problem

Vaccination rates are likely to reflect the expected benefits and drawbacks for individuals. As a larger share of the population gets vaccinated, individuals have more incentives to free ride and benefit from the positive externalities of a high vaccination rate, while not being affected by the potential harms of receiving vaccination. Using Covid-19 vaccination data at the municipality level in the Italian region of Lombardy, we show that communities with a higher level of civic capital were able to overcome this collective action problem. An indirect measure of the willingness to contribute to a public good (i.e. the share of residents paying the TV licence) proves to be particularly useful to predict the success of vaccination campaigns.