Fear of Infection and the Common Good: COVID-19 and the First Italian Lockdown

Lloyd Balbuena and Merylin Monaro
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Lloyd Balbuena: Department of Psychiatry, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, SK S7N 0W8, Canada
Merylin Monaro: Department of General Psychology, University of Padova, 35151 Padua, Italy

IJERPH, 2021, vol. 18, issue 21, 1-10

Abstract: In the first quarter of 2020, Italy became one of the earliest hotspots of COVID-19 infection, and the government imposed a lockdown. During the lockdown, an online survey of 2053 adults was conducted that asked about health behaviors and about the psychological and overall impact of COVID-19. The present study is a secondary analysis of that data. We hypothesized that self-control, higher socio-economic status, existing health conditions, and fear of infection were all inversely related to actions (or intentions) that violated the lockdown (i.e., infractions). Using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM), we found that only the fear of infection significantly dissuaded people from violating lockdown rules. Since it is not practical or ethical to sow a fear of infection, our study indicates that enacting rules and enforcing them firmly and fairly are important tools for containing the infection. This may become more important as vaccines become more widely available and people lose their fear of infection.

Keywords: social dilemma; fear of infection; safety measures; collective behavior; pathogens; self-control (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
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