* Bloomberg…
Is there anything the government can say to get people to wear masks during a pandemic? There’s one message that had some positive effect, at least in Illinois.
A recent survey of more than than 2,000 state residents offered respondents five different messages and gauged whether they made people more or less likely to wear a mask in public, as compared to a control group that saw no message. Comparing masks to helmets and seatbelts was the only message that had a positive impact on people’s decisions. […]
About 92% of respondents who were shown the message that compared masks to helmets and seatbelts were likely to wear a mask, compared to 89% of the respondents in the control group. A 3 percentage point increase may not seem like much, but Civis says messages like these tend to have a lower effect for issues that people have already been highly exposed to. “People have heard so much about it that their opinions are strongly held,” Crystal Son, health care analytics director at Civis, said in an email. “Given the saturation of messaging around Covid and masks, a 3 [percentage point] treatment effect is both statistically significant and meaningful.” […]
The worst-performing message showed the World Health Organization finding that masks may reduce Covid-19 spread by 85% and included text that began, “The science is clear.” That strategy led to a 3 percentage point decrease in mask-wearing likelihood as compared to the control group. The other message with a negative effect showed images of people wearing masks with text over it that read, “If it gets us out, we’re all in,” with smaller text explaining that wearing a mask lets people get out of the house. Messages invoking a potential second wave of coronavirus and the risk of infecting elderly family members had neutral effects.
The researchers also broke down the responses regionally. In areas outside of northeast Illinois and the Chicago metro area, the comparison to seatbelts and helmets had an even greater effect, increasing mask-wearing by 5 percentage points. It was also more effective in rural areas, showing a similar increase of 5 percentage points, compared to 3 percentage points among urban and and suburban areas. The four other messages, however, were no more effective among any of these groups.
The full poll is here. The poll was paid for by Civis, which is helping the administration with its response.
* They tested five messages…
As you know, the first one tested best and they’re using it. That one also had a projected “backlash probability” of just 3 percent. The “85 percent” message had the highest backlash probability, at a whopping 90 percent.
There’s more, so click here.
