Enhancing men’s HPV vaccine uptake intention: Examining the roles of information sources, knowledge, risk perception, and peer experience

Men are an overlooked catch-up population in Human papillomavirus (HPV) prevention. Scholars have been exploring how men perceive HPV and the vaccine (Pitts et al., 2017), how to craft effective messages to promote vaccination (Huang & Li, 2021), and cognitive and affective factors that lead to the vaccination intention (Koskan et al., 2021). Little is unknown regarding the sources of information upon which men rely to make sense of HPV and how they influence the vaccine uptake intention. Also, since HPV is a gendered health issue, men may feel distant from contracting it, which causes a barrier to their vaccination. Previous studies suggest that a reference point is important in enhancing the intention to take protective measures (Huang & Li, 2021). However, this argument is mainly tested in studies of message design. This study fills the research gaps and tests the impact of these factors via a survey of 151 men in China between the ages of 19 to 33 (M = 25.44, SD = 2.83).

Our findings are three-fold. First, men’s sources of information could have an impact on their knowledge and risk perception of HPV. Sources of male friends and web portals are significantly and positively related to knowledge, while female friends as a source of HPV information was negatively associated with knowledge. The more frequently men received information about HPV from web portals, the higher their perceived susceptibility to contracting HPV. In addition, the perceived general severity of HPV was positively associated with sources of doctors, web portals, and knowledge, while was negatively associated with the source of state media.

Second, risk perception is a strong predictor of the HPV vaccine uptake intention. However, HPV risks and the vaccines’ risks have a distinctive impact. Men are more likely to worry about the side effects of the vaccine. Since HPV is sex-related and in some cultures, a stigmatized health issue, men may worry that the side effects of the vaccines will expose their act of being vaccinated. This will create an association to the disease or an image of being sexually active, even they do not contract it.

Third, our findings suggest that we should consider men’s reference points when they make sense of the risks of HPV and the vaccines. In-group members’ experience is a significant predictor of the vaccine uptake intention. There is a positive and indirect relationship between getting HPV information from web portals and intention to receive HPV vaccine through knowledge and in-group peer experience (i.e., they have known males have been vaccinated), respectively. Men are more likely to hear those men have received HPV vaccination from their relatives and male friends, which further increases their vaccination intention. By contrast, when men get HPV information from female friends, they are less likely to know about in-group peer experience, which is less likely to motivate them to get the HPV vaccine. Furthermore, receiving HPV information more from doctors, and male friends, men reported lower perceived side effects, which results in higher vaccination intention.