Mask On, Mask Off: Risk Perceptions for COVID-19 and Compliance with COVID-19 Safety Measures

Since early 2020, COVID-19 has spread throughout the United States (US), killing more than 700,000. Mask-wearing, social-distancing, and hand hygiene can curb the spread of COVID-19 and other infectious diseases. However, the adherence to COVID-19 safety measures varies considerably among the US public, likely due to disparate perceptions of COVID-19's risk. The current study examines risk perceptions for COVID-19 (RP-C) in a nationally representative sample of US residents (N = 512), as well as their political preferences, news media consumption, COVID-19 safety attitudes (SA-C) and reported COVID-19 safety behaviors (SB-C; e.g., mask-wearing and social-distancing). Using structural equation modeling, we tested a comprehensive measure for RP-C with a single latent factor, finding good model fit. We found that higher RP-C was associated with being more liberal, consuming more traditional news media, having attitudes that supported compliance with COVID-19 safety measures, and having greater reported compliance with COVID-19 safety measures. In addition, factor loadings for RP-C items indicate that people's RP-C was more strongly determined by personal and family, rather than collective or societal risk, which suggests risk communication may be improved by focusing on personal and family risk. Public health efforts to combat COVID-19 are only as good as compliance allows, and RP-C's strong relationship with SB-C indicates a potential means for risk communicators to increase compliance with COVID-19 safety measures. This finding will remain important as new COVID-19 variants, such as the Delta variant, emerge.