Social influences on mask‐wearing intentions during the COVID‐19 pandemic

Abstract

Face mask‐wearing is important for reducing COVID‐19 spread. Masking is a publicly visible behavior and thus, social factors such as descriptive and personal norms, risk images, and impression management concerns are salient and likely influential. Study 1 (N = 381) surveyed participants during the early stages of the pandemic, assessing correlational relationships between social factors and masking intentions. Study 2 (N = 778) replicated Study 1 at a later stage in the pandemic and experimentally manipulated the group to which norms and risk images referred—familiar, unfamiliar, or general others. Study 1 findings revealed that perceived descriptive norms, personal norms, and risk images, together strongly related to face mask‐wearing independent of COVID‐19 threat perception. Study 2 results revealed that people's impressions of non‐mask wearers were less negative and their perceptions of mask‐wearing less normative among familiar versus unfamiliar others. People were also less likely to wear masks among familiar versus unfamiliar others. These results indicate that specific care should be taken to develop interventions that will increase masking in the presence of familiar others.

Effect of Social Norms and Psychological Factors on Consumer Green Buying Intentions: The Mediating Role of Personal Norms an Entrepreneurial Perspective

“…These studies assert that biospheric values encourage a person to act in an environmentally friendly way, and personality characteristics of considering future consequences for current action make a drive within him or her to choose green products (Shin, Fan, Tang, 2023). Simultaneously, the scholars also endorse the vitality of injunctive social norms (Doran & Larsen, 2016; and descriptive social norms (Goldstein, Cialdini, & Griskevicius, 2008;Lipsey & Losee, 2023) to create buying intentions. Descriptive norms describe the info about prevailing appropriate conduct and behavior in the society dependent on the apprehension regarding the actions of people usually be done (Ryoo & Kim, 2023).…”

“…Injunctive norms, on the other hand, reflect beliefs about how one ought to act based on expectations of what other people would morally approve or disapprove of (Hansen et al, 2018). Doran and Larsen (2016) , as well as Lipsey and Losee (2023), suggested that descriptive social norms and injunctive social norms both activate and promote buying intentions toward green products. The past literature shows a direct link of personal norms and social and psychological factors with buying intentions towards green products.…”

“…Descriptive norms describe the info about prevailing appropriate conduct and behaviour in the society dependent on the apprehension regarding action of people usually be done (Cialdini et al, 1990 as cited by Lipsey & Losee, 2023). For instance, individual forbid to spread littering on a tourist spot which seems clean and tidy because it reembarks that other folks have also been trying to evade strewing.…”