COVID-19 Personal Protective Behaviors during Large Social Events: The Value of Behavioral Observations

Abstract

Within the context of reopening society in the summer of 2021, as the UK moved away from ‘lockdowns’, the Government of Wales piloted the return of organized ‘mass gatherings’ of people at a number of test events. The current study reports behavioral observations that were made at two of the test events to inform this process. The researchers were particularly interested in four key factors: how (1) context within a venue, (2) environmental design, (3) staffing and social norms, and (4) time across an event, affected the personal protective behaviors of social distancing and face-covering use. Data collection was undertaken by trained observers. Adherence to protective behaviors was generally high, but there is clear evidence that these behaviors were shaped in a systematic way by the environment, situational cues, and the passage of time during the events. Some instances of large-scale non-adherence to personal protective behaviors were documented. An analysis within a dual-process framework suggests ways to understand and respond to supporting target health behaviors in groups of people where intervention is deemed valuable, such as in complex or ambiguous contexts. This is one of the first studies to include a ‘true’ behavioral measure in understanding human responses to COVID-19. It demonstrates that behavioral observations can add precision and granularity to understanding human behavior in complex real-world contexts. Given the significant physical and mental health burden created acutely and chronically by COVID-19, this work has implications for how governments and organizations support target populations in other complex challenges facing us today, such as in sustainability, and healthy lifestyle behaviors. An individual’s intentions are not always matched by their actions, and so the findings support a balanced liberal paternalistic approach where system-level changes support appropriate individual-level decisions to engender collective responsibility and action.

Concrete Decisions: How Psychological Distance Influences Willingness to Engage in Risky COVID Behavior

“…cigarette packaging, but the approach has been criticized as it can generate anxiety and also does not directly promote the desired behavior [51] though see [52]. However, in certain circumstances, such as during immediate decisions in uncertain circumstances, such interventions may serve to bias behavior in a safer direction [12,52]. In contrast, a natural tendency for communicating risk to groups, is to use higher-level abstract construals (such as public communications) [53].…”

Closing the Gap: How Psychological Distance Influences Willingness to Engage in Risky COVID Behavior

“…Concrete representations of the negative consequences of behavior have been widely used in attempts to reduce addictive behaviors, e.g., cigarette packaging, but the approach has been criticized as it can generate anxiety and also does not directly promote the desired behavior [ 52 ] though see [ 53 ]. However, in certain circumstances, such as during immediate decisions in uncertain circumstances, such interventions may serve to bias behavior in a safer direction [ 12 , 53 ]. In contrast, a natural tendency for communicating risk to groups is to use higher-level abstract construals (such as public communications) [ 54 ].…”

“…Furthermore, social pain due to rejection has been shown to activate similar areas of the brain to physical pain [ 9 , 10 ] and lacking social support has been linked to an increased risk of mortality [ 11 ]. As such, understanding the key drivers of human social behavior in pandemic contexts provides an important key for a successful response and risk mitigation [ 3 , 12 ].…”

Healthcare in the Time of COVID-19: An Environmental Perspective on the Pandemic’s Impact on Hospitals

“…The above has revealed that, in recent years there has been a notable increase in the number of studies analysing the impact of the pandemic and its consequences on society and the environment [28][29][30][31][32]. Key topics have been the lockdown's effect on the environment, changes in product demand, plastic usage, and the subsequent increase in waste.…”