@Article{info:doi/10.2196/25762,
author="Dennis, Alexander S
and Moravec, Patricia L
and Kim, Antino
and Dennis, Alan R",
title="Assessment of the Effectiveness of Identity-Based Public Health Announcements in Increasing the Likelihood of Complying With COVID-19 Guidelines: Randomized Controlled Cross-sectional Web-Based Study",
journal="JMIR Public Health Surveill",
year="2021",
month="Apr",
day="13",
volume="7",
number="4",
pages="e25762",
keywords="Amazon Mechanical Turk; compliance; COVID-19; custom; effectiveness; guideline; identity; public health; public health announcement; public service announcement; social media; web-based health information",
abstract="Background: Public health campaigns aimed at curbing the spread of COVID-19 are important in reducing disease transmission, but traditional information-based campaigns have received unexpectedly extreme backlash. Objective: This study aimed to investigate whether customizing of public service announcements (PSAs) providing health guidelines to match individuals' identities increases their compliance. Methods: We conducted a within- and between-subjects, randomized controlled cross-sectional, web-based study in July 2020. Participants viewed two PSAs: one advocating wearing a mask in public settings and one advocating staying at home. The control PSA only provided information, and the treatment PSAs were designed to appeal to the identities held by individuals; that is, either a Christian identity or an economically motivated identity. Participants were asked about their identity and then provided a control PSA and treatment PSA matching their identity, in random order. The PSAs were of approximately 100 words. Results: We recruited 300 social media users from Amazon Mechanical Turk in accordance with usual protocols to ensure data quality. In total, 8 failed the data quality checks, and the remaining 292 were included in the analysis. In the identity-based PSA, the source of the PSA was changed, and a phrase of approximately 12 words relevant to the individual's identity was inserted. A PSA tailored for Christians, when matched with a Christian identity, increased the likelihood of compliance by 12 percentage points. A PSA that focused on economic values, when shown to individuals who identified as economically motivated, increased the likelihood of compliance by 6 points. Conclusions: Using social media to deliver COVID-19 public health announcements customized to individuals' identities is a promising measure to increase compliance with public health guidelines. Trial Registration: ISRCTN Registry 22331899; https://www.isrctn.com/ISRCTN22331899. ",
issn="2369-2960",
doi="10.2196/25762",
url="https://publichealth.jmir.org/2021/4/e25762",
url="https://doi.org/10.2196/25762",
url="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33819910"
}