Trust in government moderates the association between fear of COVID-19 as well as empathic concern and preventive behaviour

With the COVID-19 pandemic, behavioural scientists aimed to illuminate reasons why people comply with (or not) large-scale cooperative activities. Here we investigated the motives that underlie support for COVID-19 preventive behaviours in a sample of 12,758 individuals from 34 countries. We hypothesized that the associations of empathic prosocial concern and fear of disease with support towards preventive COVID-19 behaviours would be moderated by trust in the government. Results suggest that the association between fear of disease and support for COVID-19 preventive behaviours was strongest when trust in the government was weak (both at individual- and country-level). Conversely, the association with empathic prosocial concern was strongest when trust in the government was high, but this moderation was only found at individual-level scores of governmental trust. We discuss how motivations may be shaped by socio-cultural context, and outline how findings may contribute to a better understanding of collective action during global crises. https://doi.org/10.1038/s44271-023-00046-5 OPEN A full

• Autores: Karakulak Arzu; Martín-Carbonell M
• Tipo de recurso: Article of journal
• Fecha de publicación: 2023
• Institución: Universidad Cooperativa de Colombia
• Repositorio: Repositorio UCC
• Idioma: eng
• OAI Identifier: oai:repository.ucc.edu.co:20.500.12494/56591
• Acceso en línea: https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12494/56591; https://doi.org/10.1038/s44271-023-00046-5
• Palabra clave: Trust in government; fear of COVID-19; empathic concern; preventive behaviour
• Rights: openAccess
• License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/