The way people perceive health risks is often assumed to influence how they adopt precautionary measures. However, people’s assessment of a given phenomenon’s risk may vary over time, and the relationship between perceived risk and compliance with protective measures may be dynamic and bi-directional. We measured the perceived risk of COVID-19 and compliance with infection control measures for a large representative sample at four time-points during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic in Norway. We employed a cross-lagged panel analysis to investigate both the cross-sectional and the temporal association between perceived risk and compliance. We found cross-sectional associations between perceived risk and compliance at one of the time points. There were no temporal associations between risk at one time-point and compliance at the subsequent time-point. Neither was compliance associated with risk at the subsequent time-point. The results suggest that the relationship between perceived risk and compliance with COVID-19 infection control measures is negligible and stable over time. A multiverse analysis showed that the absence of a relationship between perceived risk and compliance was robust to different operationalizations of perceived risk. This highlights the need for a nuanced understanding of how risk perceptions impact behavior during a pandemic.

AIMS:The decision to vaccinate may be motivated by self-protection or community protection, and people may to varying degrees feel a personal responsibility or a collective obligation to vaccinate. In two preregistered survey experiments during the COVID-19 pandemic, we examined how a benefit framing (personal vs. collective) and a responsibility framing (personal vs. collective) influence vaccine intention. METHODS:We used a 2×2 survey experiment design to manipulate vaccine promotion framing systematically. The experiments were conducted on large, overlapping representative samples of Norwegian adults. Separate survey experiments were performed before (N=5474) and after (N=1789) the COVID-19 vaccine rollout in Norway. RESULTS:Both experiments showed that framing vaccination choice as a collective (vs. personal) responsibility increased vaccine intention. In the first experiment there was no effect of benefit framing, while in the second experiment emphasising personal (vs. collective) benefit increased vaccine intentions. There was no interaction between the factors in either experiment. We also observed a considerable increase in vaccine intention between the first and second experiment. CONCLUSIONS:These findings indicate that highlighting collective responsibility may boost vaccine uptake, whereas it is more difficult to conclude about emphasising personal versus collective benefits. Message framing may be worth considering when designing health communication strategies during infectious disease outbreaks.

Aims: The COVID-19 pandemic provided a unique opportunity to assess how infected patients viewed risk. We investigated whether cases infected early in the pandemic had assessed the risk to be lower, been more exposed and took fewer precautions to prevent infection. Methods: We asked first-wave Norwegian COVID-19 patients ( n = 88) to recall how they had thought about risk of infection, exposure in potential infectious situations and their compliance to infection control measures early in the pandemic. Answers from this group were compared WITH emergency room patients with non-pulmonary complaints ( n = 75) and with a nationally representative sample ( n = 4083). Results: Both patient groups saw the risk as lower than did the representative sample. Contact with infected people was more frequent for the COVID-19 patients than for the other patients. More of the COVID-19 patients had travelled abroad immediately before the outbreak. COVID-19 patients complied less with the infection control measures than did the representative sample. The COVID-19 patients agreed less than the other patients with a statement that they had ‘complied in general’. Conclusions: Risk-behaviour was overrepresented among the first COVID-19 patients. Potential memory artefacts should be considered when interpreting the results.

To communicate effectively about risk and uncertainty we need to understand how phrases that describe the probability of an event are understood. Phrases may refer to higher or lower probabilities; they may communicate a precise or a rough estimate, and there may be more or less agreement on the interpretation of the phrase. Previous research has provided taxonomies for how phrases refer to different ranges of quantified probabilities. Our online survey (N = 537) showed that 22 Norwegian probability phrases were interpreted to refer to roughly the same probabilities as their English counterparts. In accordance with preregistered hypotheses, the phrases that were expected to express higher probabilities were assigned higher point estimates of interpretation (H1). The phrases that were expected to be less precise were assigned wider ranges of possible interpretation (H2). In addition to presenting the phrases alone, our study also presented the phrases as part of positive or negative clinical framing. This manipulation led to medium-sized effects that phrases were assigned lower probabilities both when they were used in positive (H3a) and in negative frames (H3b). The current study suggests a taxonomy for how the probability of an event is expressed in Norwegian. This may be relevant for high-stakes settings where it is important to communicate effectively and accurately about risk.

Public health strategies to protect against pandemics rely on members of the public volunteering to be tested when they have legitimate concerns about being infected. People may be motivated to seek testing due to believing they have been more at risk for infection, they have been more exposed to infection, or they have not taken the same precautions as others. We asked people at a COVID-19 test station in October 2020 (T1, n = 179) and in January-February 2021 (T2, n = 184) about their recent perceived risk, their exposure to infection sources and their compliance with infection control measures. Their responses were compared to those from a representative sample (T1 n = 2.523 and T2 n = 2.194) taken at approximately the same time. We found that people at test stations had seen the risk as lower, that they had more frequently been in situations where they could have been exposed to infection, and they had complied less with infection control measures.

It is crucial to understand why people comply with measures to contain viruses and their effects during pandemics. We provide evidence from 35 countries (Ntotal = 12,553) from 6 continents during the COVID-19 pandemic (between 2021 and 2022) obtained via cross-sectional surveys that the social perception of key protagonists on two basic dimensions-warmth and competence-plays a crucial role in shaping pandemic-related behaviors. Firstly, when asked in an open question format, heads of state, physicians, and protest movements were universally identified as key protagonists across countries. Secondly, multiple-group confirmatory factor analyses revealed that warmth and competence perceptions of these and other protagonists differed significantly within and between countries. Thirdly, internal meta-analyses showed that warmth and competence perceptions of heads of state, physicians, and protest movements were associated with support and opposition intentions, containment and prevention behaviors, as well as vaccination uptake. Our results have important implications for designing effective interventions to motivate desirable health outcomes and coping with future health crises and other global challenges.

To handle an infectious outbreak, the public must be informed about the infection risk and be motivated to comply with infection control measures. Perceiving the situation as threatening and seeing public benefits to complying may increase the public’s motivation to comply. The current study used a preregistered survey experiment to investigate if emphasizing high infection risk and appealing to societal benefits impacted intention to comply with infection control measures. The results show main effects of risk and of appeals to societal benefits. There was no interaction between risk scenario and motivational emphasis. The results suggest that to maximize compliance, information about disease outbreak should emphasize the individual risk of contracting the disease, and could also underline the public value of limiting infection spread. These findings can inform communication strategies during an infectious disease outbreak and help health authorities limit transmission.

To limit an infectious outbreak, the public must be informed about the infection risk and be motivated to comply with infection control measures. Perceiving a situation as threatening and seeing benefits to complying may be necessary to motivate for compliance. The current study used a preregistered survey experiment with a 2-by-2 between-subject design to investigate if emphasizing high infection risk and appealing to societal benefits impacted intention to comply with infection control measures. The results from a representative Norwegian sample (N = 2533) show that describing a high (as opposed to low) personal risk scenario had a small main effect on compliance. Further, appealing to public (as opposed to self-interested) benefits also had a small main effect. There was no interaction between risk scenario and motivational emphasis. The results suggest that to maximize compliance, information about disease outbreak should emphasize the individual risk of contracting the disease, and could also underline the public value of limiting infection spread. These findings can inform health authorities about the motives underlying compliance with infection control measures during an infectious disease outbreak.

Compliance to infection control measures may be influenced both by the fear of negative consequences of a pandemic, but also by the expectation to be able to handle the pandemic's challenges. We performed a survey on a representative sample for Norway (N = 4,083) in the first weeks of the COVID-19 lock-down in March 2020. We had preregistered hypotheses to test the effect of optimism and perceived risk on compliance. Perceived risk had small effects on increasing compliance and on leading to more careful information gathering. The expected negative association between optimism and compliance was not supported, and there was instead a small positive association. We found a small effect that optimism was associated with seeing less risk from the pandemic and with a larger optimistic bias. Finally, an exploratory analysis showed that seeing the infection control measures as being effective in protecting others explained a substantial proportion of the variation in compliance. The study indicates that how we think about pandemic risk has complex and non-intuitive relationships with compliance. Our beliefs and motivations toward infection control measures appears to be important for compliance.

Effektiv håndtering av en pandemi avhenger av at befolkningen har tillit til myndighetene, og at den stoler på og er villig til å følge smitteverntiltakene. I mars, juni og august 2020 undersøkte vi disse faktorene i tre spørreundersøkelser som er representative for Norges befolkning. Disse viste at flertallet har høy tillit til hvordan nasjonale og regionale myndigheter håndterer pandemien, og tillit til at de selv vil kunne håndtere de utfordringer som pandemien kan komme til å gi dem. De fleste stoler på informasjonen fra helsemyndighetene, spesielt når det kommer til smitteverntiltak, og mener det er viktig å følge med på offisiell informasjon. De aller fleste sier at de følger smitteverntiltakene, og tror at tiltakene vil være effektive. Til tross for at opplevelsen av pandemien endret seg i løpet denne perioden, viste undersøkelsene bare små endringer i etterlevelse. I denne perioden hadde den norske befolkningen stor tillit til helsemyndighetene og ønsket å følge den offisielle informasjonen og tiltakene. Denne tilliten kan være avgjørende for vellykket håndtering av pandemier.

The tourism sector is becoming an essential part of the world economy with more than 3 million tourists crossing international borders each day. The motives driving this behavior are, however, only rudimentarily understood in the social sciences, and few have approached the issue experimentally. Furthermore, the emergence of social media use in this context is rampant but barely included in travel motivation research. The main aim of the present work is to explore if signaling, the act of displaying your experiences to others in order to achieve social esteem, should be included as a travel motive. Two experiments were conducted to explore this possibility, a field-experiment among domestic and international tourists visiting Bergen, and a student-sample experiment. The first investigated if different degrees of signaling opportunities impacted intentions to visit a tourist attraction in Bergen, while the second investigated whether the loss of signaling opportunities from destinations with different levels of attractiveness impacted scores of disappointment and misfortune. Results were ambiguous, indicating no increase in intention to visit the tourist attraction in the first experiment, while the second experiment exhibited higher scores of disappointment and misfortune when losing signaling opportunities from more prestigious destinations. The present work discusses reasons for these findings, but maintains that the role of signaling as a travel motive remains unclear.