Using Health Belief Model, TriRisk Model, and Fatalism to predict COVID-19 Social Distancing Compliance Behavior

Amid a raging COVID-19 pandemic, governments everywhere need to deploy more targeted strategies to make social distancing effective and reduce human to human transmission of the virus. 357 Participants across India participated in the study. The age range of participants were 15- 78 years (M = 47.64, SD = 14.46), 41.5% of whom were men and 58.5% were women. Multi-item and single-item scales were used to assess risk perceptions, basic components of the health belief model, fatalism, and social distancing compliance behavior. The results revealed that experiential risk perception was the strongest predictor followed by perceived barriers and gender. Deliberative risk perception and affective risk perception were significantly positively correlated with compliance behavior, though neither turned out to be statistically significant predictors of compliance behavior. Experiential risk perception mediated the path between cognitive risk assessment and compliance behavior. The study has implications in designing lockdown/social distancing compliance strategies.