Gallup, Washington, DC, United States.
Institute of Public Policy, George Washington University, Washington, DC, United States.
Front Public Health. 2023 Mar 8;11:1019206. doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2023.1019206. eCollection 2023.
We investigate the role of information exposure in shaping attitudes and behaviors related to the SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) pandemic and whether baseline political affiliation and news diet mediate effects. In December 2020, we randomly assigned 5,009 U.S. adults to nine brief text-based segments related to the dynamics of the pandemic and the safety of various behaviors, estimating the effects on 15 binary outcomes related to COVID-19 policy preferences, expected consumer behavior, and beliefs about safety. Average effects reach significance (95% CI) in 47 out of 120 models and equal 7.4 ppt. The baseline effects are large for all outcomes except beliefs. By contrast, interaction effects by political party and media diet are significant for beliefs but rarely significant for policy and behavioral attitudes. These findings suggest partisan policy and behavioral gaps are driven, at least in part, by exposure to different information and that equalizing information sources would lead to partisan convergence in beliefs.
我们研究了信息曝光在塑造与 SARS-CoV-2（COVID-19）大流行相关的态度和行为方面的作用，以及基线政治倾向和新闻偏好是否会调节这些作用。2020 年 12 月，我们随机将 5009 名美国成年人分配到九个与大流行动态和各种行为安全性相关的简短基于文本的片段中，估计了 15 个与 COVID-19 政策偏好、预期消费行为和安全性信念相关的二元结果的影响。在 120 个模型中的 47 个中，平均效应达到显著水平（95%CI），达到 7.4 个百分点。除了信念外，所有结果的基线效应都很大。相比之下，政党和媒体偏好的交互效应在信念方面显著，但在政策和行为态度方面很少显著。这些发现表明，党派政策和行为差距至少部分是由接触不同信息驱动的，而平等信息来源将导致党派在信念上的趋同。
