The Policy Lab, Brown University, Providence, RI, 02903.
Department of Political Science, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, 61801.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2022 Jul 19;119(29):e2118770119. doi: 10.1073/pnas.2118770119. Epub 2022 Jul 11.
The theory that health behaviors spread through social groups implies that efforts to control COVID-19 through vaccination will succeed if people believe that others in their groups are getting vaccinated. But "others" can refer to many groups, including one's family, neighbors, fellow city or state dwellers, or copartisans. One challenge to examining these understudied distinctions is that many factors may confound observed relationships between perceived social norms (what people believe others do) and intended behaviors (what people themselves will do), as there are plausible common causes for both. We address these issues using survey data collected in the United States during late fall 2020 ( = 824) and spring 2021 ( = 996) and a matched design that approximates pair-randomized experiments. We find a strong relationship between perceived vaccination social norms and vaccination intentions when controlling for real risk factors (e.g., age), as well as dimensions known to predict COVID-19 preventive behaviors (e.g., trust in scientists). The strength of the relationship declines as the queried social group grows larger and more heterogeneous. The relationship for copartisans is second in magnitude to that of family and friends among Republicans but undetectable for Democrats. Sensitivity analysis shows that these relationships could be explained away only by an unmeasured variable with large effects (odds ratios between 2 and 15) on social norms perceptions and vaccination intentions. In addition, a prediction from the "false consensus" view that intentions cause perceived social norms is not supported. We discuss the implications for public health policy and understanding social norms.
健康行为通过社交群体传播的理论意味着，如果人们相信自己所在群体中的其他人正在接种疫苗，那么通过接种疫苗来控制 COVID-19 的努力就会成功。但是，“其他人”可以指许多群体，包括自己的家人、邻居、同城或同州居民、或党派同志。研究这些研究不足的区别的一个挑战是，许多因素可能会混淆观察到的感知社会规范（人们认为他人所做的）与预期行为（人们自己将要做的）之间的关系，因为两者都有合理的共同原因。我们使用 2020 年秋季末（n=824）和 2021 年春季（n=996）在美国收集的调查数据以及一种匹配设计来解决这些问题，该设计模拟了配对随机实验。我们发现，在控制实际风险因素（例如年龄）以及已知可预测 COVID-19 预防行为的维度（例如对科学家的信任）的情况下，感知疫苗接种社会规范与疫苗接种意愿之间存在很强的关系。当查询的社交群体变得更大且更加多样化时，这种关系的强度会降低。在共和党人中，党派同志的关系仅次于家人和朋友，但在民主党人中则无法检测到。敏感性分析表明，只有一个具有较大影响的未测量变量（对社会规范认知和疫苗接种意愿的比值在 2 到 15 之间）才能解释这些关系。此外，“虚假共识”观点认为意图导致感知社会规范的预测也没有得到支持。我们讨论了这些关系对公共卫生政策和理解社会规范的影响。
