Effect of national cultural dimensions and HIV prevalence rates on stigma towards people living with HIV/AIDS

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the main and interactive effects of national culture dimensions and HIV prevalence rates on stigma towards people living with HIV/AIDS (PLHIVA). We examined these various relationships using data from a sample of 68,041 individuals from 49 countries, obtained from the World Values Survey. We used Hierarchical Linear Modeling to conduct our cross-level analyses. Our results indicated that collectivistic societies were positively associated while egalitarian and performance-oriented societies were negatively associated with stigma towards PLHIVA. Additionally, HIV prevalence rates interact with several cultural dimensions to worsen stigma towards PLHIVA. Our findings indicate the need to tailor stigma reduction strategies by taking the national culture dimensions of a given society into consideration when designing and implementing programs.

KEYWORDS:

• Stigma
• people living with HIV/AIDS
• GLOBE national culture
• cross-national differences

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Funding

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