Dangerous liaisons: an online experiment on the role of scientific experts and politicians in ensuring public support for anti-COVID measures-Reference-Cited by-同舟云学术

Dangerous liaisons: an online experiment on the role of scientific experts and politicians in ensuring public support for anti-COVID measures

Published:2021-03 Issue:3 Volume:8 Page:
ISSN:2054-5703
Container-title:Royal Society Open Science
language:en
Short-container-title:R. Soc. open sci.

Author:

Farjam Mike¹^ORCID,Bianchi Federico²^ORCID,Squazzoni Flaminio²,Bravo Giangiacomo³⁴

Affiliation:

1. European Studies, Centre for Languages and Literature, Lund University, Lund, Sweden

2. Department of Social and Political Sciences, University of Milan, Milan, Italy

3. Department of Social Studies, Linnaeus University, Växjö, Sweden

4. Centre for Data Intensive Sciences and Applications, Linnaeus University, Växjö, Sweden

Abstract

The effectiveness of public health measures to prevent COVID-19 contagion has required less vulnerable citizens to pay an individual cost in terms of personal liberty infringement to protect more vulnerable groups. However, the close relationship between scientific experts and politicians in providing information on COVID-19 measures makes it difficult to understand which communication source was more effective in increasing pro-social behaviour. Here, we present an online experiment performed in May 2020, during the first wave of the pandemic on 1131 adult residents in Lombardy, Italy, one of the world's hardest hit regions. Results showed that when scientific experts recommended anti-contagion measures, participants were more sensitive to pro-social motivations, unlike whenever these measures were recommended by politicians and scientific experts together. Our findings suggest the importance of trusted sources in public communication during a pandemic.

Publisher

The Royal Society

Subject

Multidisciplinary

Link

https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rsos.201310

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