Alliance for Pandemic Preparedness

April 6, 2021

Assessment of the Effectiveness of Identity-Based Public Health Announcements in Increasing the Likelihood of Complying with COVID-19 Guidelines: An Online Experiment

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  • Public Service Announcements (PSA) tailored to match the identity of the viewer increase the likelihood that the viewer reported a willingness to comply with mask-use and stay-at-home policies. In this cross-sectional online experiment of Amazon Mechanical Turk workers (n=292), a PSA tailored for Christians when matched with a Christian identity increased likelihood of reported compliance with mask-use policies by 12% , while a PSA focused on economics when matched with an economics-focused identity increased likelihood of compliance by 6%. Within-subject effects were controlled for by showing the control and tailored PSAs in a random order for each participant.

Dennis et al. (Apr 6, 2020). Assessment of the Effectiveness of Identity-Based Public Health Announcements in Increasing the Likelihood of Complying with COVID-19 Guidelines: An Online Experiment (Preprint). JMIR Public Health and Surveillance. https://doi.org/10.2196/25762