In Science we (should) trust: expectations and compliance during the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

The magnitude and nature of the COVID-19 pandemic prevents public health policies from relying on coercive enforcement. Practicing social distancing, wearing masks and staying at home are voluntary and conditional on the behavior of others. We present the results of a large-scale survey experiment in nine countries with representative samples of the population. We find that both empirical expectations (what others do) and normative expectations (what others approve of) play a significant role in compliance, beyond the effect of any other individual or group characteristic. In our survey experiment, when empirical and normative expectations of individuals are high, compliance goes up by 55% (relative to the low expectations condition). Similar results are obtained when we look at self-reported compliance among those with high expectations. Our results are driven by an asymmetric interaction with individuals’ trust in government and science. Holding both expectations high, the effect of trusting science is substantial and significant in our vignette experiment (22% increase in compliance), and even larger in self-reported compliance (76% and 127% increase before and after the lockdown). By contrast, trusting the government only generates modest effects. At the macro level, the country-level trust in science, and not in government, becomes a strong predictor of compliance.

Love Thy Neighbour? Perceived Community Abidance and Private Compliance to COVID-19 Norms in India

“…This is in line with other research that shows motivation for compliance behaviours are pro-social, and can be driven by multiple social motives such as, social norms, reciprocity, cooperation and social learning (Batson & Powell, 2003; Dovidio et al, 2017; Nguyen et al, 2018; Rand et al, 2014). Importantly, the findings complement other studies on COVID-19 (Bicchieri et al, 2020; Nakayachi et al, 2020). Further, experimental studies in other contexts have indicated that perception about community behaviour influences one’s own behaviour.…”

Your health vs. my liberty: Philosophical beliefs dominated reflection and identifiable victim effects when predicting public health recommendation compliance during the COVID-19 pandemic

“…Recent research found that trust in science was a more potent predictor of complying with public health recommendations than hypothesized variables such as political orientation (Koetke et al, 2020;Mulukom, 2020;Ruisch et al, 2021). Together these points suggest that the predictive power of the scientific realism measure may have less to do with realism about science than trust in science (Bicchieri et al, 2020). Future research could profitably dissociate trust in science from metaphysical beliefs about science.…”

Political orientation and adherence to social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic in Italy

“…Evidence in Brodeur et al (2020) shows that compliance post-lockdown is especially large for trust in the press and relatively smaller for trust in science, medicine, or government. Bicchieri et al (2020) argue instead that, since practicing social distancing, wearing masks, and staying at home are voluntary and conditional on the behavior of others, they are most affected by what others do (empirical expectations) and what others approve (normative expectations), concluding that country-level trust in science, and not in government, becomes a strong predictor of compliance. According to Cairney and Wellstead (2021), citizens need to trust their elected politicians, who need to base their decisions on scientific experts to understand and respond to the problem.…”