Conspiracy Theories Are Central to the Complex System of Predictors of Italian Vaccine Hesitancy
Published in Italian Political Science, 2026
Recommended citation: Bertero, A. (2026). Conspiracy Theories Are Central to the Complex System of Predictors of Italian Vaccine Hesitancy. Italian Political Science, 20(3), 239–262. https://doi.org/10.69101/IPS.2025.20.3.3 https://italianpoliticalscience.com/index.php/ips/article/view/295
Rather than treating the predictors of vaccine hesitancy as a list of independent correlates, the article reconstructs them as an interconnected system. Beliefs about the origin of COVID-19 that were considered conspiratorial when the survey was fielded emerge as a central node associated with many other predictors, while a narrower set of variables remains directly related to hesitancy after accounting for the rest of the network.
In this paper, conspiracy beliefs refers specifically to respondents’ beliefs about the origin of COVID-19. In the context of data collection, between March and June 2021, the relevant response options expressed rejection of the dominant public-health account and greater openness to alternative interpretations that were then commonly classified as conspiratorial. The article does not evaluate whether those claims were ultimately true or false.