Abstract
In the wake of the sudden spread of COVID-19, a large amount of the Italian population practiced incongruous behaviors with the protective health measures. The present study aimed at examining psychological and psychosocial variables that could predict behavioral compliance. An online survey was administered from 18–22 March 2020 to 2766 participants. Paired sample t-tests were run to compare efficacy perception with behavioral compliance. Mediation and moderated mediation models were constructed to explore the association between perceived efficacy and compliance, mediated by self-efficacy and moderated by risk perception and civic attitudes. Machine learning algorithms were trained to predict which individuals would be more likely to comply with protective measures. Results indicated significantly lower scores in behavioral compliance than efficacy perception. Risk perception and civic attitudes as moderators rendered the mediating effect of self-efficacy insignificant. Perceived efficacy on the adoption of recommended behaviors varied in accordance with risk perception and civic engagement. The 14 collected variables, entered as predictors in machine learning models, produced an ROC area in the range of 0.82–0.91 classifying individuals as high versus low compliance. Overall, these findings could be helpful in guiding age-tailored information/advertising campaigns in countries affected by COVID-19 and directing further research on behavioral compliance.
Highlights
Public willingness to comply with the protective health measures proposed by authorities is critical for controlling the outcomes of an infectious disease outbreak [1], given that “behavioral changes can significantly affect the epidemic spread both qualitatively [ . . . ] and quantitatively” [2].Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19, known as 2019-nCoV), an acute respiratory illness with an unknown cause, emerged in China in December 2019 and, since has spread rapidly throughoutInt
Our second and third research questions were only partially confirmed: on the one hand, risk perception and civic attitudes as moderators made the mediation of self-efficacy insignificant, thereby invalidating research questions 2b, 2c, 3b, and 3c. With respect to this unexpected result, we propose that the two relevant moderators made self-efficacy less important in influencing compliance with the health measures; further research investigating the associations between these variables is recommended
As regards the Machine learning (ML) classification models outcome (RQ1), it has been shown that the above-mentioned psychological and psychosocial variables are able to predict which individuals have high versus low compliance, with an ROC area in the range of 0.82–0.91 and high sensitivity for the target class
Summary
Public willingness to comply with the protective health measures proposed by authorities is critical for controlling the outcomes of an infectious disease outbreak [1], given that “behavioral changes can significantly affect the epidemic spread both qualitatively [ . . . ] and quantitatively” [2].Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19, known as 2019-nCoV), an acute respiratory illness with an unknown cause, emerged in China in December 2019 and, since has spread rapidly throughoutInt. Public willingness to comply with the protective health measures proposed by authorities is critical for controlling the outcomes of an infectious disease outbreak [1], given that “behavioral changes can significantly affect the epidemic spread both qualitatively [ . ] and quantitatively” [2]. Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19, known as 2019-nCoV), an acute respiratory illness with an unknown cause, emerged in China in December 2019 and, since has spread rapidly throughout. Res. Public Health 2020, 17, 7252; doi:10.3390/ijerph17197252 www.mdpi.com/journal/ijerph
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