IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jeborg/v187y2021icp415-430.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The impact of public health messaging and personal experience on the acceptance of mask wearing during the COVID-19 pandemic

Author

Listed:
  • Cherry, Todd L.
  • James, Alexander G.
  • Murphy, James

Abstract

Face coverings have been shown to slow the spread of COVID-19, yet their use is not universal and remains controversial in the United States. Designing effective nudges for widespread adoption is important when federal mandates are politically or legally infeasible. We report the results from a survey experiment in which subjects were exposed to one of three video messages from President Trump, and then indicated their preference for wearing a mask. In the first video, the President simply recited the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidelines. In the second, the President additionally emphasized that wearing a mask is optional. In the third video, the President added that he will not personally wear a mask. We find that exposure to presidential messages can increase the stated likelihood of wearing a mask—particularly among the President’s supporters. We also explore experiential effects of COVID-19, and find that people (especially supporters of the President) are more likely to support wearing a mask if they know someone who has tested positive for COVID-19. These results offer guidance to policy makers and practitioners interested in understanding the factors that influence viral risk mitigation strategies.

Suggested Citation

  • Cherry, Todd L. & James, Alexander G. & Murphy, James, 2021. "The impact of public health messaging and personal experience on the acceptance of mask wearing during the COVID-19 pandemic," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 187(C), pages 415-430.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jeborg:v:187:y:2021:i:c:p:415-430
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2021.04.006
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167268121001475
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jebo.2021.04.006?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jérôme Hergueux & Nicolas Jacquemet, 2015. "Social preferences in the online laboratory: a randomized experiment," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 18(2), pages 251-283, June.
    2. Rutström, E. Elisabet & Wilcox, Nathaniel T., 2009. "Stated beliefs versus inferred beliefs: A methodological inquiry and experimental test," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 67(2), pages 616-632, November.
    3. Nicolas Jacquemet & Alexander James & Stéphane Luchini & James J. Murphy & Jason F. Shogren, 2019. "Lying and Shirking Under Oath," Working Papers 2019-02, University of Alaska Anchorage, Department of Economics.
    4. John Horton & David Rand & Richard Zeckhauser, 2011. "The online laboratory: conducting experiments in a real labor market," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 14(3), pages 399-425, September.
    5. M. Vittoria Levati & Matthias Sutter & Eline van der Heijden, 2007. "Leading by Example in a Public Goods Experiment with Heterogeneity and Incomplete Information," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 51(5), pages 793-818, October.
    6. Coibion, Olivier & Gorodnichenko, Yuriy & Weber, Michael, 2025. "The cost of the COVID-19 crisis: Lockdowns, macroeconomic expectations, and consumer spending," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 229(C).
    7. Nicolas Jacquemet & Alexander G James & Stéphane Luchini & James J Murphy & Jason F Shogren, 2021. "Do truth-telling oaths improve honesty in crowd-working?," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 16(1), pages 1-18, January.
    8. Hermalin, Benjamin E, 1998. "Toward an Economic Theory of Leadership: Leading by Example," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 88(5), pages 1188-1206, December.
    9. Cherry, Todd L. & McEvoy, David M. & Sælen, Håkon, 2017. "Conditional cooperation and cultural worldviews," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 158(C), pages 51-53.
    10. repec:cup:judgdm:v:5:y:2010:i:5:p:411-419 is not listed on IDEAS
    11. Simonsohn, Uri & Karlsson, Niklas & Loewenstein, George & Ariely, Dan, 2008. "The tree of experience in the forest of information: Overweighing experienced relative to observed information," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 62(1), pages 263-286, January.
    12. Chesney, Thomas & Chuah, Swee-Hoon & Hoffmann, Robert, 2009. "Virtual world experimentation: An exploratory study," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 72(1), pages 618-635, October.
    13. Teresa A. Myers & Edward W. Maibach & Connie Roser-Renouf & Karen Akerlof & Anthony A. Leiserowitz, 2013. "The relationship between personal experience and belief in the reality of global warming," Nature Climate Change, Nature, vol. 3(4), pages 343-347, April.
    14. Jack, B. Kelsey & Recalde, María P., 2015. "Leadership and the voluntary provision of public goods: Field evidence from Bolivia," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 122(C), pages 80-93.
    15. Gans, Joshua Samuel, 2020. "The Economic Consequences of R=1: Towards a Workable Behavioural Epidemiological Model of Pandemics," SocArXiv yxdc5, Center for Open Science.
    16. Antonio A. Arechar & Gordon T. Kraft-Todd & David G. Rand, 2017. "Turking overtime: how participant characteristics and behavior vary over time and day on Amazon Mechanical Turk," Journal of the Economic Science Association, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 3(1), pages 1-11, July.
    17. Scott R Baker & Robert A Farrokhnia & Steffen Meyer & Michaela Pagel & Constantine Yannelis & Jeffrey Pontiff, 0. "How Does Household Spending Respond to an Epidemic? Consumption during the 2020 COVID-19 Pandemic," The Review of Asset Pricing Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 10(4), pages 834-862.
    18. Editorial, 2020. "Covid-19 and Climate Change," Journal, Review of Agrarian Studies, vol. 10(1), pages 5-6, January-J.
    19. repec:hal:pseose:halshs-00984211 is not listed on IDEAS
    20. Lea Cassar & Arnd H. Klein, 2017. "A Matter of Perspective: How Experience Shapes Preferences for Redistribution," CESifo Working Paper Series 6302, CESifo.
    21. Philipson, Tomas & Posner, Richard A, 1994. "Public Spending on AIDS Education: An Economic Analysis," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 37(1), pages 17-38, April.
    22. Tomaz Cajner & Leland D. Crane & Ryan A. Decker & John Grigsby & Adrian Hamins-Puertolas & Erik Hurst & Christopher Kurz & Ahu Yildirmaz, 2020. "The US Labor Market during the Beginning of the Pandemic Recession," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 51(2 (Summer), pages 3-33.
    23. Paolacci, Gabriele & Chandler, Jesse & Ipeirotis, Panagiotis G., 2010. "Running experiments on Amazon Mechanical Turk," Judgment and Decision Making, Cambridge University Press, vol. 5(5), pages 411-419, August.
    24. Goolsbee, Austan & Syverson, Chad, 2021. "Fear, lockdown, and diversion: Comparing drivers of pandemic economic decline 2020," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 193(C).
    25. Abdullah Almaatouq & Alejandro Noriega-Campero & Abdulrahman Alotaibi & P. M. Krafft & Mehdi Moussaid & Alex Pentland, 2020. "Adaptive social networks promote the wisdom of crowds," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 117(21), pages 11379-11386, May.
    26. Berinsky, Adam J. & Huber, Gregory A. & Lenz, Gabriel S., 2012. "Evaluating Online Labor Markets for Experimental Research: Amazon.com's Mechanical Turk," Political Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 20(3), pages 351-368, July.
    27. Angela Fagerlin & Catharine Wang & Peter A. Ubel, 2005. "Reducing the Influence of Anecdotal Reasoning on People’s Health Care Decisions: Is a Picture Worth a Thousand Statistics?," Medical Decision Making, , vol. 25(4), pages 398-405, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Antoci, Angelo & Sabatini, Fabio & Sacco, Pier Luigi & Sodini, Mauro, 2022. "Experts vs. policymakers in the COVID-19 policy response," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 201(C), pages 22-39.
    2. Faina Linkov & Christopher L. Cummings & David J. Dausey, 2024. "Official risk communication for COVID-19 and beyond: can we do a better job?," Environment Systems and Decisions, Springer, vol. 44(2), pages 293-300, June.
    3. Dirk H. R. Spennemann, 2021. "COVID Face Masks: Policy Shift Results in Increased Littering," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(17), pages 1-11, September.
    4. Anand, Vaibhav, 2022. "The Value of Forecast Improvements: Evidence from Advisory Lead Times and Vehicle Crashes," MPRA Paper 114491, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    5. Anand, Vaibhav, 2001. "The Value of Forecast Improvements: Evidence from Advisory Lead Times and Vehicle Crashes," SocArXiv hdpga, Center for Open Science.
    6. Dirk H. R. Spennemann, 2021. "COVID-19 Face Masks as a Long-Term Source of Microplastics in Recycled Urban Green Waste," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(1), pages 1-15, December.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Prissé, Benjamin & Jorrat, Diego, 2022. "Lab vs online experiments: No differences," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 100(C).
    2. Hindsley, Paul & McEvoy, David M. & Morgan, O. Ashton, 2020. "Consumer Demand for Ethical Products and the Role of Cultural Worldviews: The Case of Direct-Trade Coffee," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 177(C).
    3. Binder, Carola Conces, 2022. "Time-of-day and day-of-week variations in Amazon Mechanical Turk survey responses," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 71(C).
    4. Fehr, Dietmar & Vollmann, Martin, 2020. "Misperceiving Economic Success: Experimental Evidence on Meritocratic Beliefs and Inequality Acceptance," Working Papers 0695, University of Heidelberg, Department of Economics.
    5. Antonio A. Arechar & Simon Gächter & Lucas Molleman, 2018. "Conducting interactive experiments online," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 21(1), pages 99-131, March.
    6. David Johnson & John Barry Ryan, 2020. "Amazon Mechanical Turk workers can provide consistent and economically meaningful data," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 87(1), pages 369-385, July.
    7. Burdea, Valeria & Woon, Jonathan, 2022. "Online belief elicitation methods," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 90(C).
    8. Nicolas Jacquemet & Alexander G James & Stéphane Luchini & James J Murphy & Jason F Shogren, 2021. "Do truth-telling oaths improve honesty in crowd-working?," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 16(1), pages 1-18, January.
    9. Cherry, Todd L. & McEvoy, David M. & Westskog, Hege, 2019. "Cultural worldviews, institutional rules and the willingness to participate in green energy programs," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 56(C), pages 28-38.
    10. Hyndman, Kyle & Walker, Matthew J., 2022. "Fairness and risk in ultimatum bargaining," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 132(C), pages 90-105.
    11. Wright, Austin L. & Sonin, Konstantin & Driscoll, Jesse & Wilson, Jarnickae, 2020. "Poverty and economic dislocation reduce compliance with COVID-19 shelter-in-place protocols," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 180(C), pages 544-554.
    12. John Gathergood & Fabian Gunzinger & Benedict Guttman-Kenney & Edika Quispe-Torreblanca & Neil Stewart, 2020. "Levelling Down and the COVID-19 Lockdowns: Uneven Regional Recovery in UK Consumer Spending," Papers 2012.09336, arXiv.org, revised Dec 2020.
    13. Cantarella, Michele & Strozzi, Chiara, 2019. "Workers in the Crowd: The Labour Market Impact of the Online Platform Economy," IZA Discussion Papers 12327, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    14. Azzam, Tarek & Harman, Elena, 2016. "Crowdsourcing for quantifying transcripts: An exploratory study," Evaluation and Program Planning, Elsevier, vol. 54(C), pages 63-73.
    15. Gandullia, Luca & Lezzi, Emanuela & Parciasepe, Paolo, 2020. "Replication with MTurk of the experimental design by Gangadharan, Grossman, Jones & Leister (2018): Charitable giving across donor types," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 78(C).
    16. Valerio Capraro & Hélène Barcelo, 2021. "Punishing defectors and rewarding cooperators: Do people discriminate between genders?," Journal of the Economic Science Association, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 7(1), pages 19-32, September.
    17. Lefgren, Lars J. & Sims, David P. & Stoddard, Olga B., 2016. "Effort, luck, and voting for redistribution," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 143(C), pages 89-97.
    18. Brodeur, Abel & Cook, Nikolai & Heyes, Anthony, 2022. "We Need to Talk about Mechanical Turk: What 22,989 Hypothesis Tests Tell us about p-Hacking and Publication Bias in Online Experiments," GLO Discussion Paper Series 1157, Global Labor Organization (GLO).
    19. Tim Straub & Henner Gimpel & Florian Teschner & Christof Weinhardt, 2015. "How (not) to Incent Crowd Workers," Business & Information Systems Engineering: The International Journal of WIRTSCHAFTSINFORMATIK, Springer;Gesellschaft für Informatik e.V. (GI), vol. 57(3), pages 167-179, June.
    20. Chandler, Dana & Kapelner, Adam, 2013. "Breaking monotony with meaning: Motivation in crowdsourcing markets," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 90(C), pages 123-133.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    COVID-19; Face masks; Pro-social behavior; Nudges; Field experiment; Experimental economics;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I1 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health
    • D71 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Social Choice; Clubs; Committees; Associations
    • D9 - Microeconomics - - Micro-Based Behavioral Economics
    • C93 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Field Experiments
    • H12 - Public Economics - - Structure and Scope of Government - - - Crisis Management
    • H42 - Public Economics - - Publicly Provided Goods - - - Publicly Provided Private Goods

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:jeborg:v:187:y:2021:i:c:p:415-430. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/jebo .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.