| Abstract [eng] |
Compliance with official prevention recommendations is essential for a successful COVID-19 pandemic control. Even though recently developed vaccines give hope that the prevalence of this infection will be stopped after a mass vaccination, preventive health behavior remains relevant. Rise of conspiracy theories after the beginning of COVID-19 pandemic, ambiguous results of past studies about compliance with preventive recommendations and lack of such studies in Lithuania stimulated to construct a hypothetic study model based on theoretical presumptions. The goal of this study was to evaluate a connection between personality, conspiracy beliefs, trust in information sources, perceived threat and adherence to COVID-19 prevention recommendations, and to provide a prognostic value of these predictors when complying with the recommendations. There were 280 respondents (228 women and 52 men) from 18 to 70 years old (M=33.60; SD=13.26) included in the study. Participants filled: BFI-10 questionnaire, conspiracy mentality questionnaire, COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs questionnaire, trust in information sources questionnaire and compliance with COVID-19 prevention recommendations questionnaire. Spearman correlation results showed that agreeableness, COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs, trust in information sources and perceived threat correlate with compliance with prevention recommendations. Path analysis showed that agreeableness, trust in information sources and perceived threat are positively related with adherence to prevention recommendations. Meanwhile conspiracy beliefs indirectly anticipate compliance with the recommendations, by reducing trust in information sources and in that way lead to lower adherence to the recommendations. This study highlights the importance of conspiracy beliefs and trust in information sources to preventive health behavior. Further studies about preventive health behavior should analyze the connection between trust in official information sources, conspiracy beliefs and intent to receive the vaccine taken to consideration the increasing disinformation about newly developed vaccines. |
