Social behavior and COVID-19: analysis of the social factors behind compliance with interventions across the United States
File(s)ijerph-19-15716.pdf (5.23 MB)
Published version
Author(s)
Maleki, Morteza
Bahrami, Mohsen
Menendez, Monica
Balsa-Barreiro, Jose
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Since its emergence, COVID-19 has caused a great impact in health and social terms. Governments and health authorities have attempted to minimize this impact by enforcing different mandates. Recent studies have addressed the relationship between various socioeconomic variables and compliance level to these interventions. However, little attention has been paid to what constitutes people’s response and whether people behave differently when faced with different interventions. Data collected from different sources show very significant regional differences across the United States. In this paper, we attempt to shed light on the fact that a response may be different depending on the health system capacity and each individuals’ social status. For that, we analyze the correlation between different societal (i.e., education, income levels, population density, etc.) and healthcare capacity-related variables (i.e., hospital occupancy rates, percentage of essential workers, etc.) in relation to people’s level of compliance with three main governmental mandates in the United States: mobility restrictions, mask adoption, and vaccine participation. Our aim was to isolate the most influential variables impacting behavior in response to these policies. We found that there was a significant relationship between individuals’ educational levels and political preferences with respect to compliance with each of these mandates.
Date Issued
2022-12-01
Date Acceptance
2022-11-19
Citation
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 2022, 19 (23)
ISSN
1660-4601
Publisher
MDPI AG
Journal / Book Title
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health
Volume
19
Issue
23
Copyright Statement
© 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/).
License URL
Subjects
Humans
Social Behavior
Population Density
Government
United States
COVID-19
Social Factors
Publication Status
Published
Article Number
15716
Date Publish Online
2022-11-25