Should governments announce specific dates for the end of social distancing measures?

Doing so might increase the number of people who disobey the measures if expectations are poorly managed and the timeline is suddenly extended, a new survey suggests.

The study — by researchers at Canadian, U.S. and Italian universities — surveyed the attitudes of Italians, who were issued stay-at-home orders March 9 and told they would be lifted April 3. Strikingly, it found that half of respondents admitted to not fully complying with the isolation orders when they were surveyed on March 18-20.

When asked how they would react if the April 3 lockdown deadline were suddenly extended “by a few weeks,” 10 per cent said they would reduce or completely abandon social distancing efforts — a significant number, considering the coronavirus is highly contagious. The rest said they would either maintain or increase their efforts.

The extent to which respondents would reduce or abandon their efforts had much to do with their expectations. The survey first asked Italians how long they expected the April 3 deadline to be extended, and then tested their intended behaviours with different extension timelines.

Among the group fully complying with social distancing measures, 15 per cent said they would reduce or abandon their efforts if the April 3 date was extended longer than the “few weeks” they expected. If the extension was less than they expected, only 3 per cent would reduce their efforts.

“It turns out that it’s mostly those who are fully compliant so far who would really react negatively to some bad surprises in terms of (isolation) duration, which means that we might lose the good ones by not managing expectations properly,” says Nicola Lacetera, a behavioural scientist at the University of Toronto and a co-author of the study.

For those who fully comply, their stated intention to do less suggests “isolation fatigue,” he add in an interview. “They’re saying, ‘Hey, I’m fully complying and you keep extending the timeline?’ They’re exhausted.”

Overall, respondents who were told extensions would be shorter than they expected were less likely to reduce their isolation efforts. Those informed extensions would be longer than expected were more likely to decrease efforts.

“To maximize the effectiveness of temporary isolation efforts, public authorities must manage public expectations on when such measures will be relaxed or lifted,” the study states. “Our findings show that expectations about the duration of social isolation measures influence the public’s intention to comply.”

The survey of 894 Italians was conducted for the academics by SWG, a leading Italian polling agency. It manages a panel of 60,000 adults and usually pays them for their time. Respondents answered the survey online or via computer-assisted telephone interviews.

The majority of respondents were in the northern part of Italy, where a flood of coronavirus victims has resulted in the near-collapse of the health-care system. Doctors triage who gets placed on the short supply of potentially lifesaving ventilators and the military drives bodies to crematoria by the truckload.

On Thursday, the total number of infections in Italy surged to more than 100,000, and the number of dead reached 11,591.

In Ontario, the provincial government closed schools for two weeks and has since extended the closure indefinitely. Premier Doug Ford also announced a state of emergency March 17 and on Monday said he would be extending it for two weeks, warning that mandatory stay-home orders may be next.

The federal government has largely refrained from setting a date for getting life back to normal, but has made clear that the success of voluntary social distancing measures will largely determine whether firmer measures are taken.

In Britain, the government implemented lockdown measures March 23, saying they would last for three weeks.

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Lacetera says the Italian survey results indicate compliance becomes especially problematic when a politician keeps moving the goalposts. The best example of that is U.S. President Donald Trump. After initially downplaying the virus threat, Trump declared a state of emergency March 13. Days later, he said he expected workers would be back at their jobs by Easter. This weekend, he extended that date to the end of April.

“This stop-and-go approach might make people feel a sense of fatigue and mistrust greater than otherwise,” Lacetera said in an interview.

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Lacetera’s report describes the fine line politicians and health authorities need to walk. Providing no end date could signal to citizens the crisis is severe but might also increase anxiety and other psychological impacts. Giving an end date to isolation measures might be more acceptable in a democratic society, but it risks suggesting the crisis is less serious, the report says.

“Extending measures after creating the expectation that they would be limited in time might reduce people’s acceptance, trust in the authority and ultimately reduce compliance,” warns the report by Lacetera and researchers from Johns Hopkins University, the University of Chicago, and the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano in Italy.

“Moving the goalposts of when the isolation measures will be lifted may lead to frustration if the public begins to believe that the goal is unattainable.”