Adherence to COVID‐19 Precautionary Measures: Applying the Health Belief Model and Generalised Social Beliefs to a Probability Community Sample

Background In the face of the global pandemic of coronavirus disease‐2019 (COVID‐19), people’s adherence to precautionary behavioral measures (e.g. social distancing) largely influences the effectiveness of those measures in containing the spread of the coronavirus. The present study aims at testing...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Applied psychology : health and well-being 2020-12, Vol.12 (4), p.1205-1223
Main Authors: Tong, Kwok Kit, Chen, Juliet Honglei, Yu, Eilo Wing‐yat, Wu, Anise M. S.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adherence
Adolescent
Adult
Aged
Aged, 80 and over
Communicable Disease Control
Coronaviruses
COVID-19
COVID-19 - prevention & control
Cynicism
Female
Guideline Adherence
Health Behavior
Health Belief Model
Health beliefs
Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice
Health promotion
Health Surveys
Humans
Macau
Male
Middle Aged
Original
Pandemics
precautionary measure
Probability
Random sampling
Sampling Studies
social axioms
Social beliefs
Social distancing
Telephone surveys
Women
Young Adult
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Background In the face of the global pandemic of coronavirus disease‐2019 (COVID‐19), people’s adherence to precautionary behavioral measures (e.g. social distancing) largely influences the effectiveness of those measures in containing the spread of the coronavirus. The present study aims at testing the applicability of the health belief model (HBM) and generalised social beliefs (i.e. social axioms) to explore strategies for promoting adherence to COVID‐19 precautionary measures. Methods We conducted a telephone survey with a two‐step stratified random sampling method and obtained a probability sample of 616 adults in Macao, China (18–87 years old; 60.9% women) in April 2020. Results Our participants showed stronger adherence to some COVID‐19 precautionary measures (e.g. face mask wearing; 96.4%) but not others (e.g. social distancing; 42.3%). Their adherence to those measures was found to be significantly associated with four HBM factors and two social axioms, after controlling for gender, age, and years of education. Conclusions The HBM and the generalised social beliefs of social cynicism and reward for application can be applied to understanding adherence to precautionary measures against COVID‐19. Strategies based on beliefs were proposed to facilitate the promotion of precautionary measures.
ISSN:1758-0846
1758-0854
DOI:10.1111/aphw.12230