Modeling and analysis of the impact of fear and media-induced awareness on vaccination coverage and infectious disease dynamics

Human behavior critically influences infectious disease transmission and control, particularly through psychological fear and media-driven awareness. This study develops a mathematical model to examine their combined effects on vaccination uptake and disease dynamics. In modelling process, it is considered that psychological fear reduces effective contact rates and enhances vaccination uptake. The analysis reveals that increasing the growth rate of media advertisements destabilizes the endemic equilibrium and induce sustained oscillations via Hopf-bifurcation, indicating that intense media campaigns may unintentionally amplify epidemic fluctuations. In contrast, stronger psychological fear, higher baseline vaccination rate, and fear-induced vaccination rate stabilize the system by eliminating the oscillatory outbreaks. Furthermore, sufficiently large baseline and media-induced vaccination rates can reduce the basic reproduction number below unity, leading to disease eradication. Notably, increasing the media-induced vaccination rate generates richer dynamics, including stability switches through double Hopf bifurcations. To better reflect real-world patterns, seasonal variation in media influence is incorporated by modeling the growth rate of media advertisements as a periodic function of time. The resulting non-autonomous system exhibits periodic and higher-order oscillations as the growth rate of media advertisements increases, leading to complex epidemic patterns that challenge long-term forecasting and the design of effective control strategies. This underscores the need for carefully timed and consistent public health communication strategies.