Assessment of the Effectiveness of Identity-Based Public Health Announcements in Increasing the Likelihood of Complying With COVID-19 Guidelines: Randomized Controlled Cross-sectional Web-Based Study.
JMIR Public Health Surveill
; 7(4): e25762, 2021 04 13.
Article
in English
| MEDLINE | ID: covidwho-2141307
ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND:
Public health campaigns aimed at curbing the spread of COVID-19 are important in reducing disease transmission, but traditional information-based campaigns have received unexpectedly extreme backlash.OBJECTIVE:
This study aimed to investigate whether customizing of public service announcements (PSAs) providing health guidelines to match individuals' identities increases their compliance.METHODS:
We conducted a within- and between-subjects, randomized controlled cross-sectional, web-based study in July 2020. Participants viewed two PSAs one advocating wearing a mask in public settings and one advocating staying at home. The control PSA only provided information, and the treatment PSAs were designed to appeal to the identities held by individuals; that is, either a Christian identity or an economically motivated identity. Participants were asked about their identity and then provided a control PSA and treatment PSA matching their identity, in random order. The PSAs were of approximately 100 words.RESULTS:
We recruited 300 social media users from Amazon Mechanical Turk in accordance with usual protocols to ensure data quality. In total, 8 failed the data quality checks, and the remaining 292 were included in the analysis. In the identity-based PSA, the source of the PSA was changed, and a phrase of approximately 12 words relevant to the individual's identity was inserted. A PSA tailored for Christians, when matched with a Christian identity, increased the likelihood of compliance by 12 percentage points. A PSA that focused on economic values, when shown to individuals who identified as economically motivated, increased the likelihood of compliance by 6 points.CONCLUSIONS:
Using social media to deliver COVID-19 public health announcements customized to individuals' identities is a promising measure to increase compliance with public health guidelines. TRIAL REGISTRATION ISRCTN Registry 22331899; https//www.isrctn.com/ISRCTN22331899.Keywords
Full text:
Available
Collection:
International databases
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
Persuasive Communication
/
Social Identification
/
Guideline Adherence
/
Public Service Announcements as Topic
/
COVID-19
Type of study:
Experimental Studies
/
Observational study
/
Prognostic study
/
Randomized controlled trials
Limits:
Adolescent
/
Adult
/
Aged
/
Female
/
Humans
/
Male
/
Middle aged
/
Young adult
Country/Region as subject:
North America
Language:
English
Journal:
JMIR Public Health Surveill
Year:
2021
Document Type:
Article
Affiliation country:
25762
Similar
MEDLINE
...
LILACS
LIS