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Dangerous liaisons: an online experiment on the role of scientific experts and politicians in ensuring public support for anti-COVID measures.

ABSTRACT: The effectiveness of public health measures to prevent COVID-19 contagion has required less vulnerable citizens to pay an individual cost in terms of personal liberty infringement to protect more vulnerable groups. However, the close relationship between scientific experts and politicians in providing information on COVID-19 measures makes it difficult to understand which communication source was more effective in increasing pro-social behaviour. Here, we present an online experiment performed in May 2020, during the first wave of the pandemic on 1131 adult residents in Lombardy, Italy, one of the world's hardest hit regions. Results showed that when scientific experts recommended anti-contagion measures, participants were more sensitive to pro-social motivations, unlike whenever these measures were recommended by politicians and scientific experts together. Our findings suggest the importance of trusted sources in public communication during a pandemic.

SUBMITTER: Farjam M

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8074882 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Dangerous liaisons: an online experiment on the role of scientific experts and politicians in ensuring public support for anti-COVID measures.

Farjam Mike M Bianchi Federico F Bianchi Federico F Squazzoni Flaminio F Bravo Giangiacomo G

Royal Society open science 20210310 3

The effectiveness of public health measures to prevent COVID-19 contagion has required less vulnerable citizens to pay an individual cost in terms of personal liberty infringement to protect more vulnerable groups. However, the close relationship between scientific experts and politicians in providing information on COVID-19 measures makes it difficult to understand which communication source was more effective in increasing pro-social behaviour. Here, we present an online experiment performed i ...[more]

PMID: 33959315

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Project description:BackgroundPublic reports on healthcare quality typically include complex data. To lower the cognitive burden of interpreting these data, some report designers create summary, or roll-up, measures combining multiple indicators of quality into one score. Little is known about how the availability of roll-ups affects clinician choice.ObjectiveTo determine how presenting quality scores at different levels of aggregation affects patients' clinician choices.DesignWe conducted a simulated clinician-choice experiment, randomizing participants to three versions of a public reporting website and comparing their clinician choices. One version aggregated all clinician-level quality measures into roll-ups, the second provided disaggregated (drill-down) scores only, and the third offered both roll-ups and drill-downs.ParticipantsFive hundred fifty panelists drawn from a probability-based Internet panel.Main measuresWe assessed the amount of effort participants exerted by tracking the length of time spent on the website and the number of concrete actions taken on the website (e.g., clicking items). We evaluated decision quality by measuring whether participants selected a clinician who performed more poorly than others and incongruence between participants' stated preferences for dimensions of quality and their chosen clinician's performance on those dimensions.Key resultsParticipants seeing drill-downs alone (mean = 14.9) or with roll-ups (mean = 19.2) took more actions than those who saw roll-ups alone (mean = 10.5) (ps < 0.05). However, participants seeing only drill-downs made poorer choices than those who saw roll-ups alone or with drill-downs. More participants seeing drill-downs chose a clinician who was outperformed (36.3% versus 23.4% [roll-up] and 25.6% [drill-down + roll-up], ps < 0.05) and made choices incongruent with stated preferences (51.2% versus 45.6% [roll-up] and 47.5% [drill-down + roll-up], ps < 0.05). The distinction between roll-up and drill-down was somewhat stronger for sicker participants.ConclusionsOur results suggest that roll-ups in healthcare quality reports, alone or as a complement to drill-downs, can help patients make better decisions for themselves.

Dataset Information

Dangerous liaisons: an online experiment on the role of scientific experts and politicians in ensuring public support for anti-COVID measures.

Publications

Dangerous liaisons: an online experiment on the role of scientific experts and politicians in ensuring public support for anti-COVID measures.

Similar Datasets

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