Government Trust and Motivational Factors on Health Protective Behaviors to Prevent COVID-19 Among Young Adults.

The purpose of this study was to determine the influence of government trust on young adults' adoption of health behaviors to prevent infection with the SARS-CoV-2 virus. We tested the hypothesis that government trust would directly and indirectly (through worry/fear and subjective norms) influence the adoption of health-protective behaviors. A sample of 1,136 university students completed a web survey after Chile's first wave of infections. The results indicate that low government trust only indirectly (through subjective norms) influenced health-protective behaviors. Conversely, worry/fear was the primary motivating factor for adopting health-protective behaviors in young adults, followed by subjective norms. In scenarios where people perceive low government trust, emotions and social norms are the motivational factors with the most significant predictive power on the adoption of health-protective behaviors.