Warning ‘Don't spread’ versus ‘Don't be a spreader’ to prevent the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak is threatening not only health but also life worldwide. It is important to encourage citizens to voluntarily practise infection-prevention (IP) behaviours such as social distancing and self-restraint. Previous research on social cognition suggested that emphasizing self-identity is key to changing a person's behaviour. The present study investigated whether reminders that highlight self-identity would be effective in changing intention and behaviour related to the COVID-19 outbreak, and hypothesized that those who read reminders highlighting self-identity (Don't be a spreader) would change IP intention and behaviour better than those who read ‘Don't spread’ or no reminder. We conducted a two-wave survey of the same participants with a one-week interval, during which we assigned one of three reminder conditions to the participants: ‘Don't spread’ (spreading condition), ‘Don't be a spreader’ (spreader condition) and no reminder (control condition). Participants marked their responses to IP intentions and actual behaviours each week based on the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare guidelines. While the results did not show significant differences between the conditions, the post hoc analyses showed significant equivalence in either IP intentions or behavioural scores. We discussed the results from the perspective of the effect size, ceiling effects and ways of manipulation checks as future methods with more effective persuasive messaging. Following in-principle acceptance, the approved Stage 1 version of this manuscript was pre-registered on the OSF at https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/KZ5Y4. This pre-registration was performed prior to data collection and analysis.

No significant association of repeated messages with changes in health compliance in the COVID-19 pandemic: a registered report on the extended parallel process model

“…In the studies where the interval lasted for several days or weeks ( Shi & Smith, 2016 ; Horowitz, 1969 ; Skilbeck, Tulips & Ley, 1977 ), the materials serving as stimuli were more complicated (e.g., 5-min video clip; eight-page pamphlet; 20-min lecture). Similarly, in a recent study investigating the relation between short health reminders and the change in behavior intention during the COVID-19 pandemic ( Yonemitsu et al, 2020 ), no effect of the reminders was reported with a 1-week interval. Therefore, it is reasonable to conjecture that in the present study, the complexity of the health proposal message and the length of time interval did not make a good match to test message repetition’s effect.…”

Stage 2 registered report: Changing health compliance through message repetition based on the extended parallel process model in the COVID-19 pandemic

“…In the studies where the interval lasted for several days or weeks (Shi & Smith, 2016;Horowitz, 1969;Skilbeck, Tulips & Ley, 1977), the materials serving as stimuli were more complicated (e.g., 5-minute video clip; 8-page pamphlet; 20-minute lecture). Similarly, in a recent study investigating the relation between short health reminders and the change in behavior intention during the COVID-19 pandemic (Yonemitsu et al, 2020), no effect of the reminders was reported with a one-week interval. Therefore, it is reasonable to conjecture that in the present study, the complexity of the health proposal message and the length of time interval did not make a good match to test the message repetition's effect.…”

Identifying potential factors associated with PCR testing for COVID-19 among Australian young people: cross-sectional findings from a longitudinal study

“…This may be an effort to protect household members [ 40 , 50 ]. Government promotions have framed the motivation to be COVID-19 tested as helping the community rather than avoiding individual risk, [ 51 ] and have used identity-based messages such as “don’t be a spreader” [ 52 ]. Youth whose income was severely affected by COVID-19 and received an Australian Government financial supplement (JobSeeker, JobKeeper payment, Youth Allowances) during the CRP had higher testing rates.…”