Covid-19 conspiracy beliefs and containment-related behaviour: The role of political trust

The roles of conspiracy beliefs and political trust for public health behaviour have seldomly been studied prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. In this study, we tested whether conspiracy beliefs affect containment-related behaviour in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic and whether this relationship is mediated by political trust, preference for saving the economy or for saving lives. The data were collected at two time points, at the beginning of the epidemic and after the state of emergency was introduced. The sample consisted of 790 adults from Serbia (349 at time 1 and 441 at time 2), of which around 60% were female, with a mean age of around 33. The results indicate that holding more conspiracy beliefs is related to less adherence to containment-related behaviour, both directly and indirectly, via decreased political trust. Preference for saving lives has a direct effect on containment-related behaviour, while preference for saving economy plays no important role in this relationship, although it has a negative zero-order association with containment-related behaviour. The findings are interpreted in light of the importance of governmental pandemic management for containing, i.e. preventing the spread of infectious diseases.