Social distancing in America: Understanding long-term adherence to COVID-19 mitigation recommendations.
Journal
PloS one
ISSN: 1932-6203
Titre abrégé: PLoS One
Pays: United States
ID NLM: 101285081
Informations de publication
Date de publication:
2021
2021
Historique:
received:
14
12
2020
accepted:
15
09
2021
entrez:
24
9
2021
pubmed:
25
9
2021
medline:
5
10
2021
Statut:
epublish
Résumé
A crucial question in the governance of infectious disease outbreaks is how to ensure that people continue to adhere to mitigation measures for the longer duration. The present paper examines this question by means of a set of cross-sectional studies conducted in the United States during the COVID-19 pandemic, in May, June, and July of 2020. Using stratified samples that mimic the demographic characteristics of the U.S. population, it seeks to understand to what extent Americans continued to adhere to social distancing measures in the period after the first lockdown ended. Moreover, it seeks to uncover which variables sustained (or undermined) adherence across this period. For this purpose, we examined a broad range of factors, relating to people's (1) knowledge and understanding of the mitigation measures, (2) perceptions of their costs and benefits, (3) perceptions of legitimacy and procedural justice, (4) personal factors, (5) social environment, and (6) practical circumstances. Our findings reveal that adherence was chiefly shaped by three major factors: respondents adhered more when they (a) had greater practical capacity to adhere, (b) morally agreed more with the measures, and (c) perceived the virus as a more severe health threat. Adherence was shaped to a lesser extent by impulsivity, knowledge of social distancing measures, opportunities for violating, personal costs, and descriptive social norms. The results also reveal, however, that adherence declined across this period, which was partly explained by changes in people's moral alignment, threat perceptions, knowledge, and perceived social norms. These findings show that adherence originates from a broad range of factors that develop dynamically across time. Practically these insights help to improve pandemic governance, as well as contributing theoretically to the study of compliance and the way that rules come to shape behavior.
Identifiants
pubmed: 34559863
doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0257945
pii: PONE-D-20-39307
pmc: PMC8462713
doi:
Types de publication
Clinical Trial
Journal Article
Multicenter Study
Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
Langues
eng
Sous-ensembles de citation
IM
Pagination
e0257945Déclaration de conflit d'intérêts
The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
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