RAPID: Easing COVID-19 Restrictions: How Variation in State Policy and Public Health Messaging Strategies Impact Risk Perceptions and Behaviors Across Time

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Recent studies of the transmission dynamics of COVID-19 suggest that intermittent physical distancing may be required until well into 2022 in order to reduce the continued spread of this novel disease. However, many individuals are eager to return to normalcy sooner, and state governments have begun the process of easing such restrictions and “restarting” their economies, despite continued warnings by public health officials. Effective risk communication is imperative to successfully navigating this next phase of the pandemic and reducing the possibility of a resurgence of COVID-19 in the coming months and years. This research studies the ways in which individual risk perceptions and consequent behaviors interact with and, more importantly, are shaped by policy and public health messaging strategies in the context of COVID-19. Based on data collected through a multi-wave panel survey across six U.S. states on individual risk perceptions and behaviors, this project provides usable information to policy makers and public health officials to inform risk communication for the COVID-19 pandemic in near real-time, particularly as restrictions related to social distancing, business closures, and other risk mitigation measures are lifted and changed. This project measures the extent to which individual risk perceptions and behaviors are shaped by not only the differential policies and risk messaging strategies utilized by government officials, but also by preexisting structural factors, such as racial, economic, and gender disparities. As such, the findings simultaneously inform existing public health strategies while advancing the extant literature on risk communication relevant to other on-going and emerging hazards.The COVID-19 pandemic emerged against the backdrop of an uneven landscape of health and social disparities, risk preparedness policies, and political factors across the United States (i.e., at pre-COVID time T0). In response to this threat, states have taken actions, most notably issuing stay-at-home orders, to attempt to mitigate risk. These initial state-level COVID-19 restrictions serve as T1 baseline data for understanding policy design and risk communication, against which individual risk perception and risk mitigation behavior can be assessed during the crisis phase of the pandemic. As COVID-19-related restrictions are eased across states (or tightened in the face of a second wave) over time, this study will assess changes in policy design, risk communication, risk perception, and risk mitigation behavior in the recovery phase at T2 and T3. Collecting repeated data from a diverse sample of individuals across multiple states characterized by different initial conditions and policy responses at three time points will allow tracking how risk perceptions and behaviors change over time, how these states’ policies and risk communication influence such changes, and how the effects of similar risk communication approaches vary across states with different pre-COVID structural conditions. These insights inform policy makers’ evolving risk communication strategies about the COVID-19 pandemic in near real-time, as well as generating new knowledge across multiple fields of social science that can inform mitigation of other emerging risks.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.