  Many countries have secured larger quantities of COVID-19 vaccines than their
populace is willing to take. This abundance and variety of vaccines created a
historical moment to understand vaccine hesitancy better. Never before were
more types of vaccines available for an illness and the intensity of
vaccine-related public discourse is unprecedented. Yet, the heterogeneity of
hesitancy by vaccine types has been neglected so far, even though factual or
believed vaccine characteristics and patient attributes are known to influence
acceptance. We address this problem by analysing acceptance and assessment of
five vaccine types using information collected with a nationally representative
survey at the end of the third wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in Hungary, where
a unique portfolio of vaccines were available to the public in large
quantities. Our special case enables us to quantify revealed preferences across
vaccine types since one could evaluate a vaccine unacceptable and even could
reject an assigned vaccine to wait for another type. We find that the source of
information that respondents trust characterizes their attitudes towards
vaccine types differently and leads to divergent vaccine hesitancy. Believers
of conspiracy theories were significantly more likely to evaluate the mRNA
vaccines (Pfizer and Moderna) unacceptable while those who follow the advice of
politicians evaluate vector-based (AstraZeneca and Sputnik) or whole-virus
vaccines (Sinopharm) acceptable with higher likelihood. We illustrate that the
rejection of non-desired and re-selection of preferred vaccines fragments the
population by the mRNA versus other type of vaccines while it generally
improves the assessment of the received vaccine. These results highlight that
greater variance of available vaccine types and individual free choice are
desirable conditions that can widen the acceptance of vaccines in societies.
