Social norms motivate COVID-19 preventive behaviors
Matthew H. Goldberg, Abel Gustafson, Edward Maibach, Sander van der Linden, Matthew T. Ballew, Parrish Bergquist, John Kotcher, Jennifer R. Marlon, Seth A. Rosenthal, Anthony Leiserowitz
Abstract
In this working paper, we used a large national survey of American adults (N = 3,933) to estimate the effect of perceived social norms among friends and family (i.e., how often friends and family perform preventive behaviors, and whether they think it is important for the respondent to do so) on people’s own COVID-19 preventive behaviors. We found that perceived norms within these close relationships are often strongly associated with the adoption of preventive behavior--in some cases more than doubling the odds that an individual will engage in a given behavior.