Experimental evidence that changing beliefs about mask efficacy and social norms increase mask wearing for COVID-19 risk reduction: Results from the United States and Italy

  1. Scott E. Bokemper
  2. Maria Cucciniello
  3. Tiziano Rotesi
  4. Paolo Pin
  5. Amyn A. Malik
  6. Kathryn Willebrand
  7. Elliott E. Paintsil
  8. Saad B. Omer
  9. Gregory A. Huber
  10. Alessia Melegaro

Reviewed by

Read the full article

Listed in

Log in to save this article

Abstract

In the absence of widespread vaccination for COVID-19, governments and public health officials have advocated for the public to wear masks during the pandemic. The decision to wear a mask in public is likely affected by both beliefs about its efficacy and the prevalence of the behavior. Greater mask use in the community may encourage others to follow this norm, but it also creates an incentive for individuals to free ride on the protection afforded to them by others. We report the results of two vignette-based experiments conducted in the United States ( n = 3,100) and Italy ( n = 2,659) to examine the causal relationship between beliefs, social norms, and reported intentions to engage in mask promoting behavior. In both countries, survey respondents were quota sampled to be representative of the country’s population on key demographics. We find that providing information about how masks protect others increases the likelihood that someone would wear a mask or encourage others to do so in the United States, but not in Italy. There is no effect of providing information about how masks protect the wearer in either country. Additionally, greater mask use increases intentions to wear a mask and encourage someone else to wear theirs properly in both the United States and Italy. Thus, community mask use may be self-reinforcing.

Article activity feed

  1. Version published to 10.1371/journal.pone.0258282
  2. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2021.03.02.21252722: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board Statementnot detected.
    RandomizationFollowing this, they reported their beliefs about who masks protect and then proceeded to the vignettes that were presented in a random order.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    No key resources detected.

    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:
    However, previous work has shown that different cultures are receptive to prosocial messaging leading to increased intentions to perform the desired action, especially in individualistic societies.(20) We note three limitations of this study. First, our measures are not behavior, but are instead measures of behavioral intentions. The evidence presented here should be used for the design of field trials to validate these estimates in the non-survey setting and with broader populations. Second, our third-party enforcement scenarios involve situations where someone has a mask but is not wearing it correctly, a less difficult case than when someone confronts a third party who does not have a mask at all. Last, we have not investigated how these effects are likely to change as vaccination against COVID-19 becomes more prevalent. It may be that the possibility someone is vaccinated will decrease the willingness to try to convince others to wear a mask because of ambiguity about whether another person is a risk factor. These questions are ripe for further investigation in follow-up work. Our findings suggest first that public health communication campaigns that emphasize messages about how facemask use protect others are more likely to be effective in promoting mask wearing than campaigns that highlight how facemasks protect the wearer. The greater efficacy of this other-regarding message is clear in the United States, but this may not apply in other contexts as demonstrated by the ...

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    About SciScore

    SciScore is an automated tool that is designed to assist expert reviewers by finding and presenting formulaic information scattered throughout a paper in a standard, easy to digest format. SciScore checks for the presence and correctness of RRIDs (research resource identifiers), and for rigor criteria such as sex and investigator blinding. For details on the theoretical underpinning of rigor criteria and the tools shown here, including references cited, please follow this link.

  3. Version published to 10.1101/2021.03.02.21252722v1 on medRxiv