During the current COVID-19 pandemic, religious gatherings have become intense hot spots for the spread of the virus. In this research, we focus on the religiosity of communities to examine whether religiosity helps or hinders adherence to mitigation policies such as shelter-in-place directives. Prior research makes opposing predictions as to the influence of religiosity. One stream predicts greater adherence because of rule-abiding norms and altruistic tendencies while another predicts lower adherence as a reaction against the restriction of personal and religious freedom. We used shelter-in-place directives as an intervention in a quasi-experiment to examine adherence over 30 days as a function of religiosity in the most populous metropolitan areas in the United States. When a shelter-in-place directive had not been imposed, religiosity did not affect people's movements. However, when the directive was imposed, higher religiosity resulted in less adherence to shelter-in-place directives. Public Significance Federal, state, and local governments have raced to implement policies and directives to curb the spread of COVID-19 in the United States. One such important policy has been the issuance of shelter-in-place directives. Our research shows that, across the 53 largest municipal regions in the country, these directives have largely been effective in reducing movement and activities. However, we also find that greater religiosity in a community leads to increased reactance to the policy and decreased adherence. Our findings can inform policy makers that the same directive can elicit less versus more adherence depending on how communities perceive it.

During the current COVID-19 pandemic, religious gatherings have become intense hot spots for the spread of the virus. In this research, we focus on the religiosity of communities to examine whether religiosity helps or hinders adherence to mitigation policies such as shelter-in-place directives. Prior research makes opposing predictions as to the influence of religiosity. One stream predicts greater adherence because of rule-abiding norms and altruistic tendencies while another predicts lower adherence as a reaction against the restriction of personal and religious freedom. We used shelter-in-place directives as an intervention in a quasi-experiment to examine adherence over 30 days as a function of religiosity in the most populous metropolitan areas in the United States. When a shelter-in-place directive had not been imposed, religiosity did not affect people’s movements. However, when the directive was imposed, higher religiosity resulted in less adherence to shelter-in-place directives.

During the current COVID-19 pandemic, religious gatherings have become intense hot spots for the spread of the virus. In this research, we focus on the religiosity of communities to examine whether religiosity helps or hinders adherence to mitigation policies such as shelter-in-place directives. Prior research has made opposing predictions as to the influence of religiosity. One stream predicts greater adherence because of rule-abiding norms and altruistic tendencies, whereas another has predicted lower adherence as a reaction against the restriction of personal and religious freedom. We used shelter-in-place directives as an intervention in a quasi-experiment to examine adherence over 30 days as a function of religiosity in the most populous metropolitan areas in the United States. When a shelter-in-place directive had not been imposed, religiosity did not affect people’s movements. However, when the directive was imposed, higher religiosity resulted in less adherence to shelter-in-place directives.

Differences in political ideology are increasingly appearing as an impediment to successful bipartisan communication from local leadership. For example, recent empirical findings have shown that conservatives are less likely to adhere to COVID-19 health directives. This behavior is in direct contradiction to past research which indicates that conservatives are more rule abiding, prefer to avoid loss, and are more prevention-motivated than liberals. We reconcile this disconnect between recent empirical findings and past research by using insights gathered from press releases, millions of tweets, and mobility data capturing local movement in retail, grocery, workplace, parks, and transit domains during COVID-19 shelter-in-place orders. We find that conservatives adhere to health directives when they express more fear of the virus. In order to better understand this phenomenon, we analyze both official and citizen communications and find that press releases from local and federal government, along with the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases, lead to an increase in expressions of fear on Twitter.