Relationship Between Knowledge and Compliance With Safety Measures: Evidence From <scp>COVID</scp> ‐19

ABSTRACT Compliance with health safety protocols is important for protecting public health, particularly in agricultural sectors where disease outbreaks can disrupt production and market access. Despite its economic significance, we know little about what drives protocol compliance. We examine the relationship between individuals' objective and self‐assessed knowledge and their compliance with safety measures in the context of COVID‐19. We find that greater opposition to COVID‐19 safety protocols is associated with lower objective knowledge and inflated self‐assessed knowledge, indicating overconfidence. Addressing cognitive biases could make public health interventions more effective, with important implications for agricultural settings where resilience depends on consistent protocol adherence.