Battiston Pietro, Kashyap Ridhi, Rotondi Valentina
University of Parma, Italy.
Department of Sociology & Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science, University of Oxford, UK.
SSM Popul Health. 2020 Dec 24;13:100721. doi: 10.1016/j.ssmph.2020.100721. eCollection 2021 Mar.
Research suggests trust in experts and authorities are important correlates of compliance with public health measures during infectious disease outbreaks. Empirical evidence on the dynamics of reliance on scientists and public health authorities during the early phases of an epidemic outbreak is limited. We examine these processes during the COVID-19 outbreak in Italy by leveraging data from Twitter and two online surveys, including a survey experiment. We find that reliance on experts followed a curvilinear path. Both Twitter and survey data showed initial increases in information-seeking from expert sources in the three weeks after the detection of the first case. Consistent with these increases, knowledge about health information linked to COVID-19 and support for containment measures was widespread, and better knowledge was associated with stronger support for containment policies. Both knowledge and containment support were positively associated with trust in science and public health authorities. However, in the third week after the outbreak, we detected a slowdown in responsiveness to experts. These processes were corroborated with a survey experiment, which showed that those holding incorrect beliefs about COVID-19 gave no greater - or even lower - importance to information when its source was stated as coming from experts than when the source was unstated. Our results suggest weakened trust in public health authorities with prolonged exposure to the epidemic as a potential mechanism for this effect. Weakened responsiveness to expert sources may increase susceptibility to misinformation and our results call for efforts to sustain trust in adapting public health response.
研究表明，在传染病爆发期间，对专家和权威机构的信任是遵守公共卫生措施的重要相关因素。关于在疫情爆发初期依赖科学家和公共卫生当局的动态的实证证据有限。我们通过利用来自推特的数据和两项在线调查（包括一项调查实验），研究了意大利新冠疫情期间的这些过程。我们发现，对专家的依赖呈曲线变化。推特和调查数据均显示，在首例病例被发现后的三周内，向专家来源寻求信息的行为最初有所增加。与这些增加相一致的是，与新冠疫情相关的健康信息知识以及对防控措施的支持广泛存在，并且知识水平越高，对防控政策的支持力度就越大。知识和对防控措施的支持都与对科学和公共卫生当局的信任呈正相关。然而，在疫情爆发后的第三周，我们发现对专家的反应速度有所放缓。一项调查实验证实了这些过程，该实验表明，那些对新冠疫情持有错误信念的人，当信息来源被指明为专家时，对信息的重视程度并不比对来源未指明时更高——甚至更低。我们的结果表明，随着疫情持续时间延长，对公共卫生当局的信任减弱是造成这种影响的一个潜在机制。对专家来源的反应减弱可能会增加对错误信息的易感性，我们的结果呼吁在调整公共卫生应对措施时努力维持信任。
