How compliance with behavioural measures during the initial phase of a pandemic develops over time: a longitudinal COVID-19 study

In this longitudinal research we adopt a complexity approach to examine temporal dynamics of variables related to compliance with behavioural measures during the COVID-19 pandemic. Dutch participants (N = 2,399) completed surveys with COVID-19-related variables five times over a period of 10 weeks (April 23th – June 30th 2020). With this data we estimated within-person COVID-19 attitude networks containing a broad set of psychological variables and their relations. These networks display variables’ predictive effects over time between measurements and contemporaneous effects during measurements. Results show 1) bidirectional effects between multiple variables relevant for compliance, forming potential feedback loops, and 2) a positive reinforcing structure between compliance, support for behavioural measures, involvement in the pandemic and vaccination intention. These results can explain why levels of these variables decreased throughout the course of the study. The reinforcing structure points towards potentially amplifying effects of interventions on these variables, and might inform processes of polarization. We conclude that adopting a complexity approach might contribute to understanding protective behaviour in the initial phase of pandemics by combining different theoretical models and modelling bidirectional effects between variables. Future research could build upon this research by studying causality with interventions and including additional variables in the networks.