Exploiting high-frequency vaccination data for COVID-19 and social capital
measures at the municipal level in Italy between January and October 2021, this pa-
per estimates the effect of social capital on vaccination compliance. We find that high
social capital had a significant positive effect on the increase in weekly vaccination
coverage rate for the overall population throughout the entire period of observation.
Results do not differ by gender
and the effect is mainly driven by younger generations. Our findings shed light on
the role of social capital as a driver of health protective behaviour, which can be
leveraged on by public health campaigns and health intervetions.
