Local restrictions did not alter behaviour during coronavirus pandemic, Aberdeen Uni research finds

People did not alter their behaviour to follow enhanced local restrictions during the pandemic, according to new research from the University of Aberdeen.

The study published in Translational Behavioral Medicine looked at people’s behaviour during the Covid-19 pandemic in Scotland.

It suggested the rules may have been more effective if based around factors other than just Covid-19 cases.

The team examined adherence to restrictions introduced during the pandemic including social distancing, mask-wearing, staying at home and hand washing.

They compared people’s behaviours before and after local restrictions were implemented. They also compared behaviours of those living in areas with increased restrictions to those living in areas without.

Results showed that people did not change their behaviour when restrictions were tightened and that applied to all behaviours including social distancing and mask wearing.

They also found people in high or low restriction areas behaved no differently to each other.

Led by Dr Chantal den Daas, senior lecturer in Health Psychology, in collaboration with the Covid Health and Adherence Research in Scotland (CHARIS) project, the team interviewed individuals across Scotland at random from March to November 2020, to get a representative sample of the Scottish population.

The respondents answered questions about their behaviours from the past week, including if they had left their home, if they had adhered to the two-metre social distancing rule, if they had worn a mask in a shop or on public transport and if they washed their hands as soon as they got home.

Dr den Daas said: “When local restrictions were introduced in 2020 due to an increase in Covid-19 case numbers, we thought we would see a change in behaviour after they were implemented. But this was not what we found.

“It is really important to build an understanding of what could have been done differently and how we can effectively influence public behaviour in the future should we be faced with another public health crisis.

“This research provided insight on the type of information we should aim to collect in future pandemics, to see if we can find better measures to predict cases, examine the need for restrictions and the effect of any restrictions put in place.

“Future research in acute outbreaks should assess behaviour and beliefs about the virus, risk on an ongoing basis and identify the need for intervention even before cases rates start to go up.”