Factors associated with high compliance behaviour against COVID-19 in the early phase of pandemic: a cross-sectional study in 12 Asian countries

Abstract

IntroductionRegardless of having effective vaccines against COVID-19, containment measures such as enhanced physical distancing and good practice of personal hygiene remain the mainstay of controlling the COVID-19 pandemic. Countries across Asia have imposed these containment measures to varying extents. However, residents in different countries would have a differing degree of compliance to these containment measures potentially due to differences in the level of awareness and motivation in the early phase of pandemic.ObjectivesIn our study, we aimed to describe and correlate the level of knowledge and attitude with the level of compliance with personal hygiene and physical distancing practices among Asian countries in the early phase of pandemic.MethodsA multinational cross-sectional study was carried out using electronic surveys between May and June 2020 across 14 geographical areas. Subjects aged 21 years and above were invited to participate through social media, word of mouth and electronic mail.ResultsAmong the 2574 responses obtained, 762 (29.6%) participants were from East Asia and 1812 (70.4%) were from Southeast Asia (SEA). A greater proportion of participants from SEA will practise physical distancing as long as it takes (72.8% vs 60.6%). Having safe distancing practices such as standing more than 1 or 2 m apart (AdjOR 5.09 95% CI (1.08 to 24.01)) or more than 3 or 4 m apart (AdjOR 7.05 95% CI (1.32 to 37.67)), wearing a mask when they had influenza-like symptoms before the COVID-19 pandemic, preferring online news channels such as online news websites/applications (AdjOR 1.73 95% CI (1.21 to 2.49)) and social media (AdjOR 1.68 95% CI (1.13 to 2.50) as sources of obtaining information about COVID-19 and high psychological well-being (AdjOR 1.39 95% CI (1.04 to 1.87)) were independent factors associated with high compliance.ConclusionsWe found factors associated with high compliance behaviour against COVID-19 in the early phase of pandemic and it will be useful to consider them in risk assessment, communication and pandemic preparedness.

Non-Compliance of Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) During Movement Control Order (MCO) for COVID-19 in Malaysia A Conceptual Framework

“…In a study of university students from Asia, Africa, and America, happiness attitude was found to be positively connected with health behaviours such as physical exercise (Peltzer et al, 2017). According to Chua et al (2021), pandemic attitudes and perspectives are comparable to those found in previous studies. People who trust authority, particularly the health system, demonstrated higher levels of compliance, as expected.…”

“…People who prefer to get information from the government showed higher levels of compliance (Morales-Vives et al, 2022). Chua et al (2021) discovered that preferring online news and social media as sources of Covid-19 information was associated with high compliance. It's also thought that people who read internet news take more measures to learn more about Covid-19, which leads to higher compliance.…”

Associations of COVID-19 Knowledge and Risk Perception with the Full Adoption of Preventive Behaviors in Seoul

“…Recently, Lv et al (2021), using a 7-point Likert scale, examined 203 Chinese pharmacy students' adoption of COVID-19 preventive behaviors recommended by the Chinese government [46]; wearing a face mask was adopted the most (6.9 points), followed by social distancing (6.2 points), and hand hygiene (5.9 points). These findings in South Korea and China may be considered in the light of a prevalent social norm of wearing a face mask among Asian populations [27,47]. The practice of wearing a mask is easily observable by others, and this makes people conscious of other people around them [48].…”

“…Future studies may include items regarding the dimension of unsafety as validated by Man et al [59], because the construct of risk perception may cover various dimensions. Finally, our findings may not be generalizable to other ethnic groups because Asians have a high compliance rate with these preventive behaviors [27,47]. However, these findings can serve as reference for designing public campaigns to increase compliance with preventive behaviors against infectious disease pandemics.…”

Public Trust and State Management of COVID-19 Pandemic in Nigeria

“…Meanwhile, records have shown that adopted measures that were even more constraining in other countries as South Africa, Kenya, United States, United Kingdom, France, Vietnam, Asia Countries, etc. were strictly complied with by the public (Chua et al, 2021;Padidar et al, 2021;Rooij, 2021 andThanh Vu, 2021). A cross-sectional study in 12 Asian countries (Chua et al, 2021) and that of the Southern African Kingdom of Eswatini (Padidar et al, 2021) showed self-motivated high compliance behaviour among the citizens.…”