Acceptance of societal and personal preventive measures during the COVID-19 pandemic among college students in three societies
Description
The global effort to slow the spread of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) largely depends on the support of every citizen to comply with societal regulations (e.g., school closure) and personal precautions (e.g., wearing a facemask). In an online study with participants from three societies (United States, China, and Japan; Ns = 122, 215, 191, respectively), we examined people’s acceptance of societal and personal preventive measures and their reasons. Drawing on social domain theory, we distinguished among moral, societal, personal, and prudential considerations as potential reasons. In the present study, participants indicated their acceptance of different societal and personal preventive measures and then endorsed the reasons (considerations) they believed to be most important to their acceptance of these measures. Also, they completed scales measuring perceived vulnerability to disease and sense of control. They were also asked to identify societal regulations already implemented by the government of their home country. Finally, using two items, we assessed participants’ subjective evaluation of the controllability of the pandemic (through societal regulations) and the preventability of COVID-19 (through personal precautions). Please see the "measures" document for the full list of items used in this study, and the "data" file for the original data of the study. Code for statistical analyses are available in the form of a SPSS syntax file. We found that participants from the United States indicated the highest acceptance of personal preventive measures (e.g., handwashing, wearing facemasks), whereas participants from China indicated the highest acceptance of societal preventive measures (e.g., closing borders, shutting down non-essential businesses). Moral considerations predicted higher acceptance of societal preventive measures, whereas personal considerations predicted lower acceptance of both societal and personal preventive measures. Chinese participants, compared with American and Japanese participants, exhibited a stronger link between societal considerations and higher acceptance of societal preventive measures.