Abstract
In the UK, there exists a significant ‘action gap’ between Government advice on measures necessary to counter the threat of COVID-19, and the behaviour of a significant minority of the population. There are several reasons for this disconnect, such as lack of message potency (i.e., credibility and congruence), inflexible/habitual behaviour patterns, prevailing beliefs (i.e. vulnerability to, and seriousness of COVID-19), and individuals valuing personal concerns above general public health. For official messages to be effective and advice adhered to, strong, coherent ‘strategic narratives’ are required. This article looks at prevailing COVID-19 government discourses, highlights important inconsistencies, and considers factors that facilitate and create barriers to the adoption of government public health directives. This includes deliberation of factors that enhance source impact, diminish the influence of message content, and the negative consequences of contrary information. Accordingly, this perspective will propose a framework for providing a unifying strategic narrative on COVID-19, one that is most likely to maximise the impact of key messages and promote effective behaviour change. This will place an emphasis on engaging the full range of actors and consider ways of reducing the efficacy of false information. The article will also provide recommendations that will help to increase the reception of government policy and suggest how strategic narratives can harness the drivers of behavioural change needed to meet challenges such as COVID-19.
Highlights
Background and PurposeAdopting a psychological perspective, this article focused on the central role that strategic narratives played in persuading UK citizens to follow public health guidelines during the lockdown (23/03/2020) and initial easing phase (10/05/2020)
For instance in the UK, there exists an important “action gap” between Government advice on measures necessary to counter the threat of COVID-19, and the activities of a significant minority of the population, who despite warnings continue to engage in behaviors that potentially place public health at risk (UCL, 2020)
Identifying factors that influence the effectiveness of earlier COVID-19 strategic narratives, will help to improve subsequent health messages
Summary
This article focused on the central role that strategic narratives played in persuading UK citizens to follow public health guidelines during the lockdown (23/03/2020) and initial easing phase (10/05/2020) This includes factors that enhanced source impact, diminished the influence of message content, and the negative consequences of contrary information (e.g., fake news). The message successfully increased awareness of the need to act and persuaded people generally that lockdown was essential to counter the threat of COVID-19, the UK government had to rapidly introduce enforcement measures to ensure that guidelines were followed This outcome was consistent with previous health research that has demonstrated that knowledge alone is not sufficiently persuasive to produce behavior change (Kelly and Barker, 2016). This notion is supported by Sibony (2020), who identified reactance as a potential reason for failure to comply with lockdown
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