Visual policy narrative messaging improves COVID-19 vaccine uptake.

In the face of vaccine hesitancy, public health officials are seeking more effective risk communication approaches to increase vaccination rates. We test the influence of visual policy narratives on COVID-19 vaccination behavior through a panel survey experiment conducted in early 2021 ( = 3,900) and then 8 weeks later ( = 2,268). We examine the effects of three visual policy narrative messages that test the narrative mechanism of character selection (, , and ) and a nonnarrative control on COVID-19 vaccine behavior.