Let's (Not) Get Together! The Role of Social Norms on Social Distancing during COVID-19

"Can the perception of what others do and approve of change individuals' intentions of complying with public health guidelines?"

Despite scientific evidence and public health guidelines indicating the importance of physical distancing as a key preventive behaviour for COVID-19, many people continue to gather with friends and to participate in social events that potentially spread the virus. It has long been argued that individual behaviour is strongly influenced by what others do (descriptive norms) and what others approve doing (prescriptive or injunctive norms). Conducted in July 2020 as part of a broader COVID-19-focused survey in Mexico, this study investigates how and why social norms change people's compliance with preventive behaviours in order to refine future communication efforts.

Survey respondents - individuals over 18 years of age living in the Mexican states of Sonora and Guanajuato - were recruited through: (i) a Facebook ad campaign associated with the official Facebook account of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB); and (ii) a separate email campaign conducted by various secretaries of the Guanajuato state government. In all, more than 23,000 individuals in Mexico were surveyed.

The experiment consists of a vignette, described in the form of a story, depicting a fictional individual, Mariana, who has been invited to attend a friend's birthday gathering during the COVID-19 pandemic and must decide whether or not to attend. This story portrays a situation that most Mexicans can relate to (birthday celebrations) and what the literature highlights to be individuals' relevant reference network during the pandemic (family and friends). These social gatherings are also relevant because they have been shown to lead to super-spreader events.

The treatments randomly assign respondents to different social norms prompts, providing information on Mariana's beliefs about: (i) whether other invitees will attend the gathering (empirical expectations), and (ii) whether other invitees approve of others' attending the gathering (normative expectations). After being exposed to the social norms prompt, respondents are asked to state whether they believe that Mariana will attend the gathering, and whether they believe that Mariana should attend the gathering.

Key results:

• Expecting that other people would attend the gathering and/or believing that other people approved of attending the gathering both increased the predicted probability that Mariana would attend the gathering by 25%, in comparison with the scenario where other people were not expected to attend nor to approve of attending.
• Predicted compliance with social norms is greatest when Mariana (i) expects few of her friends to attend and (ii) believes few of her friends would approve of her attending. Whenever either of these conditions fails to hold (or both do), predicted attendance rises significantly. In other words, both high empirical and high normative expectations appear to be necessary to increase compliance with social distancing. This suggests that norms-based information campaigns can be more effective by targeting both kinds of expectations.
• Almost every respondent, regardless of treatment assignment, expressed the view that Mariana should not attend. This is consistent with the universal approval of preventive guidelines documented in surveys of the Mexican public. It also suggests that there is a disconnect between such approval and actual behaviour, or between approval and the predicted behaviour of others.

Key implications:

• Highlighting that others are not complying is likely to reduce compliance, and this could be an unintended byproduct of news coverage about noncompliance.
• Active and public repudiations of norms can also lead to further erosion of compliance.
• Targeting normative expectations - what people ought to be doing - will likely not suffice to induce the desired behaviours unless people also expect others to comply.

In conclusion: "information highlighting others' compliance and targeting normative expectations at the same time are likely to play an essential role in any successful information campaign seeking to encourage individuals to adopt preventive behaviors."