Who complies with COVID-19 transmission mitigation behavioral guidelines?

Abstract

During the past 6 months, the world has lost almost 950,000 lives because of the outbreak of COVID-19, with more than 31 million individuals diagnosed with COVID-19 worldwide. In response, lockdowns, and various other policies have been implemented. Unfortunately, many individuals are violating those policies and governments have been urging people to comply with the behavioral guidelines. In this paper, we argue that personality traits need to be considered to understand and encourage more effective public compliance with COVID 19 transmission mitigation behavioral guidelines. Using a sample of 8,548 individuals from Japan, we show that certain personality traits are related to the tendency to comply with COVID-19 transmission mitigation behavioral guidelines. We emphasize the importance of understanding why people respond differently to the same authority's messages and provide actionable insights for government policy makers and those who implement policies.

Exploring the association between compliance with measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19 and big five traits with Bayesian generalized linear model

“…These results are consistent with previous studies that examined the relationship between Big Five traits and compliance during the pandemic with relatively small-scale datasets. Extrovert people might experience more difficulties with distancing measures because they strongly prefer social activities ( Nofal et al, 2020 ). Neuroticism is perhaps associated with increased concern of being contracted COVID-19 so with compliance ( Qian & Yahara, 2020 ).…”

“…Neuroticism is perhaps associated with increased concern of being contracted COVID-19 so with compliance ( Qian & Yahara, 2020 ). Agreeable, open-minded, and conscientious people might comply with the measures perhaps because they tend to value communal goals and harmony (agreeable), be more opened to the new social norms (open-minded) and adhere to regulations and rules consistently (conscientious) ( Abdelrahman, 2020 ; Nofal et al, 2020 ; Zajenkowski et al, 2020 ).…”

“…Interestingly, the perceived personal cost to comply with preventive measures, which has not been well examined in the previous studies, were positively associated with neuroticism, extroversion, and agreeableness while only negatively associated with conscientiousness. It is well expected to see the positive association with extroversion and negative association with conscientiousness because extroverted people might experience more difficulties to be isolated from others while conscientious people might perceive doing so is consistent with their own personality ( Carvalho et al, 2020 ; Liu et al, 2021 ; Nofal et al, 2020 ). In general, these findings are consistent with the previous studies that examined the associations between Big Five personality traits, risk aversion and prosocial tendency, and compliance.…”

“…Ebrahimi et al (2020) found that low extroversion and high conscientiousness were positively associated with voluntary social distancing among 4158 Norwegians. One study conducted with 8548 Japanese participants reported that compliance was positively associated with agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness, while negatively associated with extroversion ( Nofal et al, 2020 ). In general, extroversion showed a negative association with compliance with containment measures while conscientiousness, agreeableness, and openness showed a positive association.…”

Exploring the Association between Compliance with Measures to Prevent the Spread of COVID-19 and Big Five Traits with Bayesian Generalized Linear Model

“…Neuroticism is perhaps associated with increased concern of being contracted COVID-19 so with compliance (Qian & Yahara, 2020). Agreeable, open-minded, and conscientious people might comply with the measures perhaps because they tend to value communal goals and harmony (agreeable), be more opened to the new social norms (openminded) and adhere to regulations and rules consistently (conscientious) (Abdelrahman, 2020;Nofal et al, 2020;Zajenkowski et al, 2020).…”