Manipulating risk of infection and appeal to public benefit increase compliance with infection control measures in a hypothetical pandemic scenario.

ABSTRACT: To limit an infectious outbreak, the public must be informed about the infection risk and be motivated to comply with infection control measures. Perceiving a situation as threatening and seeing benefits to complying may be necessary to motivate for compliance. The current study used a preregistered survey experiment with a 2-by-2 between-subject design to investigate if emphasizing high infection risk and appealing to societal benefits impacted intention to comply with infection control measures. The results from a representative Norwegian sample (N = 2533) show that describing a high (as opposed to low) personal risk scenario had a small main effect on compliance. Further, appealing to public (as opposed to self-interested) benefits also had a small main effect. There was no interaction

SUBMITTER: Bjorkheim S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9681092 | biostudies-literature | 2022

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature