Abstract
Why do we adopt new rules, such as social distancing? Although human sciences research stresses the key role of social influence in behaviour change, most COVID‐19 campaigns emphasize the disease’s medical threat. In a global data set (n = 6,675), we investigated how social influences predict people’s adherence to distancing rules during the pandemic. Bayesian regression analyses controlling for stringency of local measures showed that people distanced most when they thought their close social circle did. Such social influence mattered more than people thinking distancing was the right thing to do. People’s adherence also aligned with their fellow citizens, but only if they felt deeply bonded with their country. Self‐vulnerability to the disease predicted distancing more for people with larger social circles. Collective efficacy and collectivism also significantly predicted distancing. To achieve behavioural change during crises, policymakers must emphasize shared values and harness the social influence of close friends and family.
Highlights
The few existing peer-reviewed studies on social predictors of COVID-19 adherence have found that people engage in more preventive measures when they have higher social responsibility and trust (Oosterhoff, Palmer, Wilson, & Shook, 2020) and when they consider adherence to the rules as a norm endorsed by others (Borgonovi & Andrieu, 2020; Lin et al, 2020; Nakayachi, Ozaki, Shibata, & Yokoi, 2020)
The role of social adherence, social approval, and personal approval in self-adherence We examined our hypotheses regarding the role of social influence on adherence in two models: the social adherence model and the social approval model
These models assessed whether self-adherence to distancing could be predicted by the perceived adherence or perceived approval of others at three social scales: close circle, country, and world
Summary
Ethics The study was approved by the ethics committee of the University of Nottingham. Number of people the participant would turn to for advice or comfort among the ones the participant indicated having voluntary contact within the past week ‘I have been following this general advice where I live’ ‘Most people in my close circle/my country/the world have been following this general advice where they live/’ 100-point scale from 0 = ‘not been following this advice at all’. Vulnerability Participants were asked ‘In your opinion, how vulnerable are the following people to the coronavirus disease?’ and were given the categories: ‘Myself’, ‘Someone I care about in my household’ and ‘Someone I care about outside of my household’ These three items were answered on continuous slider scales, with the extreme ends labelled: ‘Not vulnerable at all’ and ‘Extremely vulnerable’. The R script used for analysis can be found on the study’s OSF page
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