Correcting Perceived Social Distancing Norms to Combat COVID-19

James Allen, Arlete Mahumane, James Riddell Iv, Tanya Rosenblat, Dean Yang and Hang Yu

No 28651, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Can informing people of high community support for social distancing encourage them to do more of it? In theory, the impact of such an intervention on social distancing is ambiguous, and depends on the relative magnitudes of free-riding and perceived-infectiousness effects. We randomly assigned a treatment providing information on true high rates of community social distancing support. We estimate impacts on social distancing, measured using a combination of self-reports and reports of others. While experts surveyed in advance expected the treatment to increase social distancing, we find that its average effect is close to zero and significantly lower than expert predictions. The treatment’s effect is heterogeneous, as predicted by theory: it decreases social distancing where current COVID-19 cases are low (where free-riding dominates), but increases it where cases are high (where the perceived-infectiousness effect dominates).

JEL-codes: D91 I12 O12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea and nep-soc
Note: DEV EH
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w28651.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:28651

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w28651

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().