Cargando…
Unwillingness to engage in behaviors that protect against COVID-19: the role of conspiracy beliefs, trust, and endorsement of complementary and alternative medicine
BACKGROUND: We investigated if people’s response to the official recommendations during the COVID-19 pandemic is associated with conspiracy beliefs related to COVID-19, a distrust in the sources providing information on COVID-19, and an endorsement of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM). ME...
Autores principales: | , , , , |
---|---|
Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
BioMed Central
2021
|
Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8027965/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33832446 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-021-10643-w |
_version_ | 1783675896298733568 |
---|---|
author | Soveri, Anna Karlsson, Linda C. Antfolk, Jan Lindfelt, Mikael Lewandowsky, Stephan |
author_facet | Soveri, Anna Karlsson, Linda C. Antfolk, Jan Lindfelt, Mikael Lewandowsky, Stephan |
author_sort | Soveri, Anna |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: We investigated if people’s response to the official recommendations during the COVID-19 pandemic is associated with conspiracy beliefs related to COVID-19, a distrust in the sources providing information on COVID-19, and an endorsement of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM). METHODS: The sample consisted of 1325 Finnish adults who filled out an online survey marketed on Facebook. Structural regression analysis was used to investigate whether: 1) conspiracy beliefs, a distrust in information sources, and endorsement of CAM predict people’s response to the non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) implemented by the government during the COVID-19 pandemic, and 2) conspiracy beliefs, a distrust in information sources, and endorsement of CAM are related to people’s willingness to take a COVID-19 vaccine. RESULTS: Individuals with more conspiracy beliefs and a lower trust in information sources were less likely to have a positive response to the NPIs. Individuals with less trust in information sources and more endorsement of CAM were more unwilling to take a COVID-19 vaccine. Distrust in information sources was the strongest and most consistent predictor in all models. Our analyses also revealed that some of the people who respond negatively to the NPIs also have a lower likelihood to take the vaccine. This association was partly related to a lower trust in information sources. CONCLUSIONS: Distrusting the establishment to provide accurate information, believing in conspiracy theories, and endorsing treatments and substances that are not part of conventional medicine, are all associated with a more negative response to the official guidelines during COVID-19. How people respond to the guidelines, however, is more strongly and consistently related to the degree of trust they feel in the information sources, than to their tendency to hold conspiracy beliefs or endorse CAM. These findings highlight the need for governments and health authorities to create communication strategies that build public trust. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12889-021-10643-w. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-8027965 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2021 |
publisher | BioMed Central |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-80279652021-04-08 Unwillingness to engage in behaviors that protect against COVID-19: the role of conspiracy beliefs, trust, and endorsement of complementary and alternative medicine Soveri, Anna Karlsson, Linda C. Antfolk, Jan Lindfelt, Mikael Lewandowsky, Stephan BMC Public Health Research Article BACKGROUND: We investigated if people’s response to the official recommendations during the COVID-19 pandemic is associated with conspiracy beliefs related to COVID-19, a distrust in the sources providing information on COVID-19, and an endorsement of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM). METHODS: The sample consisted of 1325 Finnish adults who filled out an online survey marketed on Facebook. Structural regression analysis was used to investigate whether: 1) conspiracy beliefs, a distrust in information sources, and endorsement of CAM predict people’s response to the non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) implemented by the government during the COVID-19 pandemic, and 2) conspiracy beliefs, a distrust in information sources, and endorsement of CAM are related to people’s willingness to take a COVID-19 vaccine. RESULTS: Individuals with more conspiracy beliefs and a lower trust in information sources were less likely to have a positive response to the NPIs. Individuals with less trust in information sources and more endorsement of CAM were more unwilling to take a COVID-19 vaccine. Distrust in information sources was the strongest and most consistent predictor in all models. Our analyses also revealed that some of the people who respond negatively to the NPIs also have a lower likelihood to take the vaccine. This association was partly related to a lower trust in information sources. CONCLUSIONS: Distrusting the establishment to provide accurate information, believing in conspiracy theories, and endorsing treatments and substances that are not part of conventional medicine, are all associated with a more negative response to the official guidelines during COVID-19. How people respond to the guidelines, however, is more strongly and consistently related to the degree of trust they feel in the information sources, than to their tendency to hold conspiracy beliefs or endorse CAM. These findings highlight the need for governments and health authorities to create communication strategies that build public trust. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12889-021-10643-w. BioMed Central 2021-04-08 /pmc/articles/PMC8027965/ /pubmed/33832446 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-021-10643-w Text en © The Author(s) 2021 Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Soveri, Anna Karlsson, Linda C. Antfolk, Jan Lindfelt, Mikael Lewandowsky, Stephan Unwillingness to engage in behaviors that protect against COVID-19: the role of conspiracy beliefs, trust, and endorsement of complementary and alternative medicine |
title | Unwillingness to engage in behaviors that protect against COVID-19: the role of conspiracy beliefs, trust, and endorsement of complementary and alternative medicine |
title_full | Unwillingness to engage in behaviors that protect against COVID-19: the role of conspiracy beliefs, trust, and endorsement of complementary and alternative medicine |
title_fullStr | Unwillingness to engage in behaviors that protect against COVID-19: the role of conspiracy beliefs, trust, and endorsement of complementary and alternative medicine |
title_full_unstemmed | Unwillingness to engage in behaviors that protect against COVID-19: the role of conspiracy beliefs, trust, and endorsement of complementary and alternative medicine |
title_short | Unwillingness to engage in behaviors that protect against COVID-19: the role of conspiracy beliefs, trust, and endorsement of complementary and alternative medicine |
title_sort | unwillingness to engage in behaviors that protect against covid-19: the role of conspiracy beliefs, trust, and endorsement of complementary and alternative medicine |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8027965/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33832446 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-021-10643-w |
work_keys_str_mv | AT soverianna unwillingnesstoengageinbehaviorsthatprotectagainstcovid19theroleofconspiracybeliefstrustandendorsementofcomplementaryandalternativemedicine AT karlssonlindac unwillingnesstoengageinbehaviorsthatprotectagainstcovid19theroleofconspiracybeliefstrustandendorsementofcomplementaryandalternativemedicine AT antfolkjan unwillingnesstoengageinbehaviorsthatprotectagainstcovid19theroleofconspiracybeliefstrustandendorsementofcomplementaryandalternativemedicine AT lindfeltmikael unwillingnesstoengageinbehaviorsthatprotectagainstcovid19theroleofconspiracybeliefstrustandendorsementofcomplementaryandalternativemedicine AT lewandowskystephan unwillingnesstoengageinbehaviorsthatprotectagainstcovid19theroleofconspiracybeliefstrustandendorsementofcomplementaryandalternativemedicine |