From Message to Messenger: Should Politicians Lead-by-Example to Increase Compliance with Public Health Directives?

ABSTRACT

This study proposes that in order to increase compliance with government directives during health crises, we should consider the message as well as the messenger. Prior research shows that highly instructional crisis communication increases compliance during acute crisis situations. Crisis communication literature provides no clear answers on how to address prolonged crises like the COVID-19 pandemic, however. We examined the impact of crisis communication on compliance with health directives in March – April 2021, during the third wave of the pandemic in Belgium. Two field experiments were conducted at two different points in time. Participants received an informational message from Belgian authorities, that was either highly instructional or not. Next, they watched a set of messages from traditional and social media, depicting Belgian politicians setting a good or a bad example in terms of adhering to public health directives. Instructional messages only proved to be effective in the first study. Leading-by-example had a stronger impact, especially in study two. During the third wave of COVID-19, Belgian people seemed more inclined to follow public health directives when politicians set the right example, due to an increase in trust in the government. Bad examples, however, decreased compliance.

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Kristien Temperville for proofreading the manuscript, Elena Laenen for her help in collecting the data, as well as the anonymous reviewers for their constructive feedback.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Notes

1. The second wave of the virus had passed since January 2021 and the government had recently announced some relaxations of the restrictions. From March 8 onwards, for example, Belgians were allowed to meet up outside with ten rather than just four people. Inside, however, people were still restricted to a “social bubble” of one person in addition to their own household and a curfew was still in force.

2. People were allowed to meet outside with a maximum of only four people, schools closed one additional week before the Easter holidays and non-essential stores opened upon appointment only. These strict measures were announced for one month, in the hope that this “Easter pause” would take the pressure off the hospitals and halt the third wave of the virus (Collis, 2021).

3. The original message on the website also urged people with symptoms to call their doctors. Because that is an instruction, however, we omitted this from the stimulus.

4. About 12% of participants had been infected with COVID-19 and 67% indicated that someone in their close environment had been infected. At the time of the study, 11% indicated that they had been vaccinated at least once against COVID-19.

5. Schools and borders had re-opened, but non-essential stores were still only open upon appointment and hairdressers remained closed for another week. There was no clear prospect of when bars and restaurants could re-open.

6. About 6% of participants had been infected with COVID-19 and 48% indicated that someone in their close environment had been infected. At the time of the study, 24% indicated that they had received at least one shot of a vaccine against COVID-19.

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.