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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Public Health
Sec. Public Health Education and Promotion
Volume 12 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2024.1447335

A Social Norms Campaign based Positive Intervention Aimed at Promoting Protective Behaviours

Provisionally accepted
  • 1 University of Cordoba, Córdoba, Spain
  • 2 Sevilla University, Seville, Andalucia, Spain
  • 3 University of Salamanca, Salamanca, Spain

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Social norms campaigns are communication strategies designed to influence people's behaviour by highlighting the social norms of their reference group. Such campaigns have been shown to be effective in promoting healthy behaviours in a variety of settings. This study explored the effectiveness of a social norms campaign applied to COVID-19 protective behaviours among university students during the pandemic. A total of 141 university students (83.1% female, 16.9% male) with a mean age of 21.55 years (SD = 4.33) initially took part in an experimental pre-test-post-test longitudinal panel study between January and July 2022, with participants randomly assigned to a control group (46 participants) or an experimental group (95 participants). Considering the experimental attrition, only 83 participants completed the last questionnaire (81.9% female, 18.1% male; mean age = 22.12 years, SD = 5.29), of whom 32 belonged to the control group and 51 to the experimental group. The results obtained using Student's t-test show that participants in the experimental group, who were exposed to the campaign, reported higher levels of self-efficacy, protective behavioural intention, and protective behaviours than the control group. It is concluded that social norms campaigns applied to COVID-19 protective behaviours are effective in times of pandemic and might be extrapolated to other epidemic contexts.

    Keywords: behavioural intention, COVID-19, Protective behaviours, self-efficacy, social norms campaigns, experimental design, university students, Public Health

    Received: 11 Jun 2024; Accepted: 21 Aug 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Cuadrado, ARENAS, Tabernero and Maldonado. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Esther Cuadrado, University of Cordoba, Córdoba, Spain

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.