Unchartered territory: Understanding public compliance during the Covid-19 pandemic and the effectiveness of UK government communications

The COVID-19 pandemic presented unpresented challenges to societies and the way in which we live, everyday behaviours became prohibited and various parts of the economy were completely shut down in the United Kingdom. Such draconian and radical changes to everyday life are indeed important to study and the present paper captures a representative response of the compliance to social distancing measures implemented in the United Kingdom. This paper explores the effectiveness of the UK Government's messaging aimed at inducing conformity, whilst considering alternative experimental messages designed to influence conformity by targeting demographics using the principles of NUDGE theory (Thaler & Sunstein, 2008). An online cross-sectional survey was administered in May/June 2020 to 1028 residents of the UK. A cluster analysis was performed to identify different demographic profiles associated with rule breaking. The findings of the present paper outlined clearly that the UK public struggled to adhere to the social distancing rules implemented with relatively low rates of complete compliance and identified two groups of individuals who although only represent a small percentage of the sample (< 20%) were accountable for the majority of rule breaking behaviour. The findings provide an indication of which measures were viewed as more serious and as such less likely to broken, alongside which demographic groups were the least compliant. Regarding the Government's messaging used during the pandemic, this was demonstrated to be more effective than the hypothetical communications used in the present study. The present paper offers, important insights into specific aspects of non-conformity, including contact with the Police during this time. The present paper offers important learning lessons to improve adherence to social distancing in the future by providing a breakdown of the areas where social distancing is most likely to breached and an indication of who is likely to do this.