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. 2021 Dec:2:100027.
doi: 10.1016/j.hpopen.2020.100027. Epub 2021 Jan 8.

Messenger effects in COVID-19 communication: Does the level of government matter?

Nathen Favero  1 , Sebastian Jilke  2 , Julia A Wolfson  3 , Chengxin Xu  4 , Matthew M Young  5
Affiliations

Messenger effects in COVID-19 communication: Does the level of government matter?

Nathen Favero et al. Health Policy Open. 2021 Dec.

Erratum in

Abstract

Public efforts to limit the spread of the coronavirus rely on motivating people to cooperate with the government. We test the effectiveness of different governmental messengers to encourage preventive health actions. We administered a survey experiment among a sample (n = 1,545) of respondents across the United States, presenting them with the same social media message, but experimentally varying the government sender (i.e., Federal, State, County, a combination of Federal + County, and a control condition) to test whether local relevance influences messaging efficacy. We find that in an information saturated environment the messenger does not matter. There is, however, variation in treatment response by partisanship, education, income, and the degree to which respondents are affected by the pandemic. While the main effect of the level of government on intended behavior is null, public health organizations are universally perceived as more trustworthy, relevant, and competent than anonymous messengers.

Keywords: COVID-19; Health messaging; Messenger effect; Survey experiment.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Violin Plots of Unconditional Primary and Secondary Outcomes. Source: Authors’ own analysis.
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Heterogenous Treatment effects of partisanship and educational attainment on self-reported willingness to self-isolate. Source: Authors’ own analysis. Notes: * p < 0.05 ** p < 0.01 *** p < 0.001.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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