Daniel W Snook, Wojciech Kaczkowski, Ari D Fodeman
{"title":"Mask On, Mask Off: Risk Perceptions for COVID-19 and Compliance with COVID-19 Safety Measures.","authors":"Daniel W Snook, Wojciech Kaczkowski, Ari D Fodeman","doi":"10.1080/08964289.2021.2021384","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Since early 2020, COVID-19 has spread throughout the United States (US), killing more than 700,000. Mask-wearing, social-distancing, and hand hygiene can curb the spread of COVID-19 and other infectious diseases. However, the adherence to COVID-19 safety measures varies considerably among the US public, likely due to disparate perceptions of COVID-19's risk. The current study examines risk perceptions for COVID-19 (RP-C) in a nationally representative sample of US residents (<i>N</i> = 512), as well as their political preferences, news media consumption, COVID-19 safety attitudes (SA-C) and reported COVID-19 safety behaviors (SB-C; e.g., mask-wearing and social-distancing). Using structural equation modeling, we tested a comprehensive measure for RP-C with a single latent factor, finding good model fit. We found that higher RP-C was associated with being more liberal, consuming more traditional news media, having attitudes that supported compliance with COVID-19 safety measures, and having greater reported compliance with COVID-19 safety measures. In addition, factor loadings for RP-C items indicate that people's RP-C was more strongly determined by personal and family, rather than collective or societal risk, which suggests risk communication may be improved by focusing on personal and family risk. Public health efforts to combat COVID-19 are only as good as compliance allows, and RP-C's strong relationship with SB-C indicates a potential means for risk communicators to increase compliance with COVID-19 safety measures. This finding will remain important as new COVID-19 variants, such as the Delta variant, emerge.</p>","PeriodicalId":55395,"journal":{"name":"Behavioral Medicine","volume":"49 3","pages":"246-257"},"PeriodicalIF":2.0000,"publicationDate":"2023-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"1","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Behavioral Medicine","FirstCategoryId":"3","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08964289.2021.2021384","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"2022/1/20 0:00:00","PubModel":"Epub","JCR":"Q3","JCRName":"BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 1
Abstract
Since early 2020, COVID-19 has spread throughout the United States (US), killing more than 700,000. Mask-wearing, social-distancing, and hand hygiene can curb the spread of COVID-19 and other infectious diseases. However, the adherence to COVID-19 safety measures varies considerably among the US public, likely due to disparate perceptions of COVID-19's risk. The current study examines risk perceptions for COVID-19 (RP-C) in a nationally representative sample of US residents (N = 512), as well as their political preferences, news media consumption, COVID-19 safety attitudes (SA-C) and reported COVID-19 safety behaviors (SB-C; e.g., mask-wearing and social-distancing). Using structural equation modeling, we tested a comprehensive measure for RP-C with a single latent factor, finding good model fit. We found that higher RP-C was associated with being more liberal, consuming more traditional news media, having attitudes that supported compliance with COVID-19 safety measures, and having greater reported compliance with COVID-19 safety measures. In addition, factor loadings for RP-C items indicate that people's RP-C was more strongly determined by personal and family, rather than collective or societal risk, which suggests risk communication may be improved by focusing on personal and family risk. Public health efforts to combat COVID-19 are only as good as compliance allows, and RP-C's strong relationship with SB-C indicates a potential means for risk communicators to increase compliance with COVID-19 safety measures. This finding will remain important as new COVID-19 variants, such as the Delta variant, emerge.
期刊介绍:
Behavioral Medicine is a multidisciplinary peer-reviewed journal, which fosters and promotes the exchange of knowledge and the advancement of theory in the field of behavioral medicine, including but not limited to understandings of disease prevention, health promotion, health disparities, identification of health risk factors, and interventions designed to reduce health risks, ameliorate health disparities, enhancing all aspects of health. The journal seeks to advance knowledge and theory in these domains in all segments of the population and across the lifespan, in local, national, and global contexts, and with an emphasis on the synergies that exist between biological, psychological, psychosocial, and structural factors as they related to these areas of study and across health states.
Behavioral Medicine publishes original empirical studies (experimental and observational research studies, quantitative and qualitative studies, evaluation studies) as well as clinical/case studies. The journal also publishes review articles, which provide systematic evaluations of the literature and propose alternative and innovative theoretical paradigms, as well as brief reports and responses to articles previously published in Behavioral Medicine.