Perceived COVID-19 Threat and Reactions to Noncompliant Health-Protective Behaviors: The Mediating Role of Desired Cultural Tightness and the Moderating Role of Age.

Marta Viola,Conrad Baldner,Daniela Di Santo,Antonio Pierro

doi:10.3390/ijerph19042364

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic is a health crisis that requires individuals to comply with many health-protective behaviors. Following the previous literature, cultural tightness has been found to be a key mechanism to increase coordination in order to mitigate collective threats (e.g., COVID-19). In this study, we test a moderated mediation model to examine whether the perceived COVID-19 threat could intensify the extent of desired tightness (i.e., a personal desire for cultural tightness), moderated by age. Subsequently, we test whether this could intensify individuals’ emotional reactions to non-compliance with COVID-19 health protective behaviors. The study relies on a cross-sectional design, with a sample of 624 participants residing in central Italy (i.e., Lazio). The data were collected from February to October 2021. Questionnaires contained self-reporting measures of the perceived COVID-19 threat, desired tightness, and personal emotional reactions to non-compliance with COVID-19 preventive measures (e.g., wearing a mask). The results confirm that the perceived COVID-19 threat is associated with an increase in the desire for cultural tightness—and that this relationship was moderated by age—and, consequently, with intolerance for noncompliance with preventive behaviors. Additionally, both direct and indirect effects of the perceived COVID-19 threat on negative emotional reactions to noncompliance were significant; this indirect effect was larger at high (+1 SD) age than at low (−1 SD) age. Overall, this research provides some insight into how people can respond to the current pandemic threat, and how this may have implications for violating rules and regulations to keep contagion under control.

Highlights

The COVID-19 pandemic represents a massive global health crisis that has taken place for two years at the time of writing
We focus on examining the impact of the perceived COVID-19 threat on the tolerance of others’ inappropriate pandemic-related behaviors through an explanatory mechanism: the desired “tightness”, i.e., the desire for stronger rules and greater sanctions for non-compliance [7,8,9,10]
We focus on whether people’s desired tightness may mediate the relationship between the perceived COVID-19 threat and emotional reactions to noncompliance with COVID-19 health-protective behaviors; we expect that the perceived

Summary

Introduction

The COVID-19 pandemic represents a massive global health crisis that has taken place for two years at the time of writing. The outcome of the preventive measures is tightly connected with the conduct kept by each individual; despite increased regulations, as of the time of writing, the pandemic has caused several million deaths worldwide [3]. Exceptional pandemic-related requirements have had a major impact on people’s lives, generating a significant amount of stress and uncertainty [4,5] and serving as a real-world test of pro-sociality [6], as individual actions, such as the implementation of adequate preventive behavior, are key to containing the spread of COVID-19 [6]

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Conclusion