Social distancing is critical to slowing the spread of COVID-19 pandemic, which threatens the nation?s health, economy, and national defense. This research project studies people?s strategic behavior in deciding to follow public health rules or not. The project uses sophisticated economic theory and empirical methods to study strategic considerations that may hamper or facilitate compliance with public health guidelines to reduce the spread of COVID-19. One person?s choice to comply with social distancing regulation influences the costs and benefits to others doing so. As a result, individual behavior depends on beliefs about others? compliance and on social norms regarding compliance. This project increases understanding of individual behavior in group settings and highlights the conditions under which benefits of publicity in mass media campaigns, and provides hundreds of thousands of public health mailers to American residents may be beneficial. The results of this research project will help public health authorities to craft more efficient public information campaigns.
This research project uses theory and empirical methods based on a large data set from Cook county to investigate how beliefs in other peoples? response influence one?s decision to comply with public health rules. The theory extends previous research on two strategic considerations, conformity, and free-riding, that influence behavior by incorporating the related phenomenon of publicity. Publicity is found to amplify pro-social behavior only when conformity dominates free-riding; otherwise publicity will lessen the effectiveness of an informational campaign. The empirics analyze a vast public health campaign in Cook County, Illinois. The campaign will provide public health best practices directly to hundreds of thousands of Cook County households. Using a mix of public information and a voluntary survey, we will evaluate the effectiveness of the public health campaign in promoting behaviors identified as decreasing the risk of transmitting COVID-19. The results of this research project will help public health authorities to craft more efficient public information campaigns.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
