Maintaining Compliance when the Virus Returns: Understanding Adherence to Social Distancing Measures in the Netherlands in July 2020

After its relative lenient, “intelligent lockdown” approach to the COVID-19 coronavirus, the Netherlands has continued its singular trajectory in combating the pandemic. The month of July introduced further relaxations to prior mitigation measures, but also saw a resurgence of infections. This working paper examines how these developments are reflected in Dutch citizens’ compliance with safe-distance measures during this period. Building on our previous surveys during the months of May and June, we report the findings of two additional survey waves collected in early (7-10) and late (21-23) Ju... Mehr ...

Verfasser: Reinders Folmer, Christopher
Kuiper, Malouke
Olthuis, Elke
Kooistra, Emmeke Barbara
de Bruijn, Anne Leonre
Brownlee, Megan
Fine, Adam
van Rooij, Benjamin
Dokumenttyp: posted-content
Erscheinungsdatum: 2020
Verlag/Hrsg.: Center for Open Science
Sprache: unknown
Permalink: https://search.fid-benelux.de/Record/base-27238186
Datenquelle: BASE; Originalkatalog
Powered By: BASE
Link(s) : http://dx.doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/vx3mn

After its relative lenient, “intelligent lockdown” approach to the COVID-19 coronavirus, the Netherlands has continued its singular trajectory in combating the pandemic. The month of July introduced further relaxations to prior mitigation measures, but also saw a resurgence of infections. This working paper examines how these developments are reflected in Dutch citizens’ compliance with safe-distance measures during this period. Building on our previous surveys during the months of May and June, we report the findings of two additional survey waves collected in early (7-10) and late (21-23) July among nationally representative samples (N = 1064 and N = 1023, respectively). The results show that the decline in compliance that was observed from May to June seems to have halted. At the same time, important predictors of compliance – such as citizens’ capacity to comply, perceptions of the threat of the virus, and support for mitigation measures – have ceased to decrease, or are increasing. Taken together, these findings suggest that Dutch citizens’ compliance with mitigation measures may be on the rise again. However, our findings also suggest that social norms for compliance continue to be eroding, which may continue to dampen citizens’ tendency to comply.