A guilt-free strategy increases self-reported non-compliance with COVID-19 preventive measures: Experimental evidence from 12 countries.

Autor: Jean-François Daoust, Éric Bélanger, Ruth Dassonneville, Erick Lachapelle, Richard Nadeau, Michael Becher, Sylvain Brouard, Martial Foucault, Christoph Hönnige, Daniel Stegmueller
Jazyk: angličtina
Rok vydání: 2021
Předmět:
Zdroj: PLoS ONE, Vol 16, Iss 4, p e0249914 (2021)
Druh dokumentu: article
ISSN: 1932-6203
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0249914
Popis: Studies of citizens' compliance with COVID-19 preventive measures routinely rely on survey data. While such data are essential, public health restrictions provide clear signals of what is socially desirable in this context, creating a potential source of response bias in self-reported measures of compliance. In this research, we examine whether the results of a guilt-free strategy recently proposed to lessen this constraint are generalizable across twelve countries, and whether the treatment effect varies across subgroups. Our findings show that the guilt-free strategy is a useful tool in every country included, increasing respondents' proclivity to report non-compliance by 9 to 16 percentage points. This effect holds for different subgroups based on gender, age and education. We conclude that the inclusion of this strategy should be the new standard for survey research that aims to provide crucial data on the current pandemic.
Databáze: Directory of Open Access Journals