Abstract
BackgroundWe investigated if people’s response to the official recommendations during the COVID-19 pandemic is associated with conspiracy beliefs related to COVID-19, a distrust in the sources providing information on COVID-19, and an endorsement of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM).MethodsThe sample consisted of 1325 Finnish adults who filled out an online survey marketed on Facebook. Structural regression analysis was used to investigate whether: 1) conspiracy beliefs, a distrust in information sources, and endorsement of CAM predict people’s response to the non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) implemented by the government during the COVID-19 pandemic, and 2) conspiracy beliefs, a distrust in information sources, and endorsement of CAM are related to people’s willingness to take a COVID-19 vaccine.ResultsIndividuals with more conspiracy beliefs and a lower trust in information sources were less likely to have a positive response to the NPIs. Individuals with less trust in information sources and more endorsement of CAM were more unwilling to take a COVID-19 vaccine. Distrust in information sources was the strongest and most consistent predictor in all models. Our analyses also revealed that some of the people who respond negatively to the NPIs also have a lower likelihood to take the vaccine. This association was partly related to a lower trust in information sources.ConclusionsDistrusting the establishment to provide accurate information, believing in conspiracy theories, and endorsing treatments and substances that are not part of conventional medicine, are all associated with a more negative response to the official guidelines during COVID-19. How people respond to the guidelines, however, is more strongly and consistently related to the degree of trust they feel in the information sources, than to their tendency to hold conspiracy beliefs or endorse CAM. These findings highlight the need for governments and health authorities to create communication strategies that build public trust.
Highlights
We investigated if people’s response to the official recommendations during the COVID-19 pandemic is associated with conspiracy beliefs related to COVID-19, a distrust in the sources providing information on COVID-19, and an endorsement of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM)
The results showed that those people who are unwilling to comply with the Non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPI), or who react with negative emotions towards the NPIs, have more conspiracy beliefs and a lower trust in the sources providing information on COVID-19
Taken together, the results show that people who have a lower trust in the establishment in providing accurate information on COVID-19 and more conspiracy beliefs have a more negative response towards the NPIs
Summary
We investigated if people’s response to the official recommendations during the COVID-19 pandemic is associated with conspiracy beliefs related to COVID-19, a distrust in the sources providing information on COVID-19, and an endorsement of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM). What characterizes NPIs and immunization programs is that their success is - to a great degree - dependent on the public’s acceptance and compliance It is worrying, that a large number of studies suggest that not all individuals comply with government-implemented NPIs during the COVID-19 pandemic [9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19]. If the COVID-19 vaccine uptake is insufficient, preventing or delaying herd immunity, NPIs will continue to play an important role in managing the spread of the disease [23]
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