Department of Political Science, Aarhus University, Denmark.
Br J Health Psychol. 2021 May;26(2):679-696. doi: 10.1111/bjhp.12519. Epub 2021 Mar 24.
The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic required rapid public compliance with advice from health authorities. Here, we ask who was most likely to do so during the first wave of the pandemic.
Quota-sampled cross-sectional and panel data from eight Western democracies (Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States).
We fielded online public opinion surveys to 26,508 citizens between 19 March and 16 May. The surveys included questions about protective behaviour, perceptions of the pandemic (threat and self-efficacy), as well as broader attitudes towards society (institutional and interpersonal trust). We employ multilevel and fixed-effects regression models to analyse the relationship between these variables.
Consistent with prior research on epidemics, perceptions of threat turn out as culturally uniform determinants of both avoidant and preventive forms of protective behaviour. On this basis, authorities could foster compliance by appealing to fear of COVID-19, but there may be normative and practical limits to such a strategy. Instead, we find that another major source of compliance is a sense of self-efficacy. Using individual-level panel data, we find evidence that self-efficacy is amendable to change and exerts an effect on protective behaviour. Furthermore, the effects of fear are small among those who feel efficacious, creating a path to compliance without fear. In contrast, two other major candidates for facilitating compliance from the social sciences, interpersonal trust and institutional trust, have surprisingly little motivational power during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.
To address future waves of the pandemic, health authorities should thus focus on facilitating self-efficacy in the public.
COVID-19 大流行的爆发要求公众迅速遵守卫生当局的建议。在这里，我们想知道在大流行的第一波期间，谁最有可能这样做。
来自八个西方民主国家（丹麦、法国、德国、匈牙利、意大利、瑞典、英国和美国）的配额抽样横断面和面板数据。
我们于 3 月 19 日至 5 月 16 日期间向 26508 名公民进行了在线公众意见调查。调查包括关于保护行为、对大流行的看法（威胁和自我效能）以及对社会的更广泛态度（机构和人际信任）的问题。我们采用多层次和固定效应回归模型来分析这些变量之间的关系。
与先前关于流行病的研究一致，对威胁的看法是避免和预防保护行为的文化统一决定因素。在此基础上，当局可以通过呼吁对 COVID-19 的恐惧来促进合规性，但这种策略可能存在规范和实际限制。相反，我们发现另一个主要的合规来源是自我效能感。使用个人层面的面板数据，我们有证据表明自我效能感是可以改变的，并对保护行为产生影响。此外，对于那些感到有能力的人来说，恐惧的影响很小，从而创造了一种无需恐惧即可合规的途径。相比之下，社会科学中促进合规性的另外两个主要候选者，人际信任和机构信任，在 COVID-19 大流行的第一波中几乎没有动力。
为了应对未来的大流行浪潮，卫生当局因此应专注于促进公众的自我效能感。
