Introduction As there is no effective vaccine available yet, social distancing and stay at home orders are two important measures to mitigate the COVID-19 virus. The real challenge lies in ensuring that people comply with these measures for the necessary weeks and months. This project gathered real- time data in the United States to assess to what extent people complied with COVID-19 mitigation measures in the period between May and July. In addition, the project aimed to understand the reasons for people’s decisions to comply (or not). This report outlines the results. To study these questions, a multi-wave cohort survey…

A new preprint by Anne Leonore de Bruijn describes the results of a survey on compliance with COVID-19 mitigation measures in Israel , which we conducted at the beginning of April. The Israeli case is interesting due to (a) the country's history of dealing with safety threats, (b) the wide-spread usage of technological surveillance to track COVID-19 spread, (c) the implementation of the military to enforce the measures, to back up regular law enforcement, and (d) the country's mix of communities, some of which display low trust in the government.The findings firstly reveal high levels of compliance among Israeli citizens. Several factors…

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Dutch government has introduced an “intelligent lockdown” with stay at home and social distancing measures. The Dutch approach to mitigate the virus focuses less on repression and more on moral appeals and self-discipline. This study assessed what factors influence whether Dutch people comply with the measures. We analyzed data from an online survey (N = 568) conducted between April 7-14. The overall results showed that reported compliance was high. Analyzing what shaped such compliance, shows that the the Dutch approach has to some extent worked as hoped in practice. Repression did not play…