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Randomized Controlled Trial
. 2021 Apr 13;7(4):e25762.
doi: 10.2196/25762.

Assessment of the Effectiveness of Identity-Based Public Health Announcements in Increasing the Likelihood of Complying With COVID-19 Guidelines: Randomized Controlled Cross-sectional Web-Based Study

Alexander S Dennis  1 , Patricia L Moravec  2 , Antino Kim  3 , Alan R Dennis  3
Affiliations
Randomized Controlled Trial

Assessment of the Effectiveness of Identity-Based Public Health Announcements in Increasing the Likelihood of Complying With COVID-19 Guidelines: Randomized Controlled Cross-sectional Web-Based Study

Alexander S Dennis et al. JMIR Public Health Surveill. .

Erratum in

Abstract

Background: Public health campaigns aimed at curbing the spread of COVID-19 are important in reducing disease transmission, but traditional information-based campaigns have received unexpectedly extreme backlash.

Objective: This study aimed to investigate whether customizing of public service announcements (PSAs) providing health guidelines to match individuals' identities increases their compliance.

Methods: We conducted a within- and between-subjects, randomized controlled cross-sectional, web-based study in July 2020. Participants viewed two PSAs: one advocating wearing a mask in public settings and one advocating staying at home. The control PSA only provided information, and the treatment PSAs were designed to appeal to the identities held by individuals; that is, either a Christian identity or an economically motivated identity. Participants were asked about their identity and then provided a control PSA and treatment PSA matching their identity, in random order. The PSAs were of approximately 100 words.

Results: We recruited 300 social media users from Amazon Mechanical Turk in accordance with usual protocols to ensure data quality. In total, 8 failed the data quality checks, and the remaining 292 were included in the analysis. In the identity-based PSA, the source of the PSA was changed, and a phrase of approximately 12 words relevant to the individual's identity was inserted. A PSA tailored for Christians, when matched with a Christian identity, increased the likelihood of compliance by 12 percentage points. A PSA that focused on economic values, when shown to individuals who identified as economically motivated, increased the likelihood of compliance by 6 points.

Conclusions: Using social media to deliver COVID-19 public health announcements customized to individuals' identities is a promising measure to increase compliance with public health guidelines.

Trial registration: ISRCTN Registry 22331899; https://www.isrctn.com/ISRCTN22331899.

Keywords: Amazon Mechanical Turk; COVID-19; compliance; custom; effectiveness; guideline; identity; public health; public health announcement; public service announcement; social media; web-based health information.

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Conflict of interest statement

Conflicts of Interest: None declared.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Experimental design. PSA: public service announcement.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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