Communicate hope to motivate the public during the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

How should health authorities communicate to motivate the public to comply with health advice during a prolonged health crisis such as a pandemic? During the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, for example, people have had to comply with successive restrictions as the world faced multiple races between controlling new waves of the virus and the development and implementation of vaccines. Here, we examine how health authorities and governments most effectively motivate the public by focusing on a specific race: between the Alpha variant and the implementation of the first generation of COVID-19 vaccinations in the winter of 2021. Following prior research on crisis communication, we focus on appeals to fear and hope using communicative aids in the form of visualizations based on epidemiological modelling. Using a population-based experiment conducted in United States ($$N = 3,022$$ N = 3 , 022 ), we demonstrate that a hope-oriented visual communication aid, depicting the competing effects on the epidemic curve of (1) a more infectious variant and (2) vaccinations, motivates public action more effectively than a fear-oriented visual communication, focusing exclusively on the threat of the new variant. The importance of the implementation of such hope-oriented messages is further highlighted by cross-national representative surveys from eight countries ($$N = 3,995$$ N = 3 , 995 ), which demonstrate that feelings of fear towards the Alpha variant alone were insufficient to activate strong compliance. Overall, these findings provide general insights into the importance of hope as a health communication strategy during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond.

Spreading the disease: Protest in times of pandemics

“…Accordingly, policy makers should aim at fostering trust in institution and supply easy‐accessible information about the threat of COVID‐19. Furthermore, insights from social psychology imply that a more positive communication approach increases the willingness to comply with public health regulations (Petersen et al., 2022 ).…”

“Why take the patient back home?”: exploring the lived experiences of caregivers of COVID-19 infected individuals in Blantyre, Malawi

“…Going forward, there is a need to make information about COVID-19 widely available, closer to the broader population, and accessible through various platforms including the issuance of fact sheets and follow-up phone calls to the caregivers [32]. This information ought to be actionable, hope-oriented in a visual format [33], and should come from trusted sources which are health institutions [22] unlike social media is saturated with wrong information [32]. Earlier studies have shown that some caregivers accessed contradicting information which has the potential of compromising the care they render as well as exacerbating their anxiety levels [9].…”

The role played by government communication on the level of public fear in social media: An investigation into the Covid-19 crisis in Italy

“…Among the population's reactions that should be monitored and managed during a crisis, fear is a prime concern ( Peitl et al, 2020 ). Government communication plays a major part in controlling fear ( Petersen et al, 2022 ; Reynolds, 2006 ) and crisis messages should, ideally, both alert and reassure people ( Lachlan et al, 2014 ). While a certain degree of manageable fear can induce people to protect themselves and follow the measures established by government, a higher level may turn into panic, becoming dangerous, and increasing harm and damage ( Sandman, 2006 ).…”