Modeling compliance with COVID-19 prevention guidelines: the critical role of trust in science

According to the World Health Organization (2020), the world is currently witnessing a global pandemic of the 2019 novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) which causes the disease COVID-19. Current data, which likely underscore the actual prevalence of the disease (Lipsitch et al., 2020; Sohrabi et al., 2020), support this notion; as of now (May 17th, 2020), COVID-19 has spread to at least 213 countries and territories and has recently exceeded more than 4,750,000 confirmed cases and 313,000 deaths (Worldometer, 2020). Due to the highly contagious nature of the virus and the exponential growth of infections observed in many countries (e.g. Italy; Remuzzi & Remuzzi, 2020), a high level of compliance with prevention guidelines, such as those issued by the World Health Organization, is necessary to ‘flatten the curve’ and slow the spread of the virus (Anderson et al., 2020). In spite of this, there have been numerous reported instances of people ignoring these instructions all over the world (Bhanot, 2020), likely exacerbating the problem.

While the previous literature has begun to unravel important medical and epidemiological information about the severity of the disease and the transmissibility of the virus, the psychosocial responses of the public are still relatively unknown (for one of the rare peer-reviewed articles, see Wang et al., 2020), and this is particularly true when it comes to individuals’ reactions to the COVID-19 prevention guidelines. We argue that exploring the antecedents of compliance with these guidelines could potentially be of great practical importance as it could help us identify high-risk groups and take the necessary steps towards improving the rate of compliance.

Development of the model To investigate the predictors of compliance with COVID-19 prevention guidelines, we developed a theoretical model (Figure 1) that includes several variables (education level, political conservatism, religious orthodoxy, conspiracy ideation, intellectual curiosity, trust in science, perception of COVID-19 risk and compliance with COVID-19 prevention guidelines), previously identified as relevant (e.g. Lau et al., 2007; Nadelson & Hardy, 2015), and relates them in a meaningful way. Modeling compliance with COVID-19 prevention guidelines: the critical role of trust in science All authors Nejc Plohl Bojan Musil https://doi.org/10.1080/13548506.2020.1772988 Figure 1. Theoretical model. Display full size Figure 1. Theoretical model. The first likely predictor of compliance with COVID-19 guidelines is COVID-19 risk perception (i.e. the extent to which a person believes that the novel coronavirus poses a serious threat). More specifically, we predict that those who are generally more concerned about COVID-19 are more likely to adhere to preventive measures as shown by previous studies, conducted in similar contexts (e.g. Chen et al., 2007; Lau et al., 2007; Maughan-Brown & Venkataramani, 2018). Since it is scientific organizations and scientists who are often the source of both, prevention guidelines and messages informing the public about COVID-19 risks, those who trust science and scientists are more inclined to perceive COVID-19 as an actual risk and follow the risk-mitigating guidelines. Support for this assumption can, for example, be found in the vaccination literature (e.g. Keelan et al., 2010) and other studies that highlight the role of trust in determining the perception of various emotionally charged scientific issues (Nadelson & Hardy, 2015). In addition, previous studies have highlighted numerous correlates and antecedents of trust in science and science skepticism, that could, directly or indirectly via trust in science, predict compliance with COVID-19-related prevention guidelines. Key variables among these are political conservatism (e.g. Rutjens et al., 2018; Wilgus & Travis, 2019), religiousness/religious orthodoxy (e.g. Chan, 2018; Rutjens et al., 2018), conspiracy thinking (e.g. Lewandowsky et al., 2013; Rutjens & van der Lee, 2020) and, to some extent, education level (e.g. Morgan et al., 2018). While more general and stable personality traits are less present in the previous literature on predictors of trust in science, we believe that aspects of open-mindedness, especially intellectual curiosity (i.e. the extent to which an individual has intellectual interests and enjoys thinking; Soto & John, 2017), could also play an important role in predicting both – trust in science and compliance with evidence-based prevention guidelines. Hence, this aspect was additionally added to the theoretical model.