Change in Social Norms regarding Mask-Wearing and Restaurant Anti-COVID Measures in Japan : Using Survey Experiment and Discrete ChoiceExperiment

This paper compares three surveys conducted between December 2022 and July 2023 to analyze changes in social norms related to COVID-19. The degree to which respondents reported wearing masks in places such as parks, streets, and shopping centers decreased over time, regardless of whether there were descriptions of others wearing masks or not. However, as of July 2023, many people still indicated that they would wear a mask and did not immediately change their behavior after the official standard was relaxed. The timing and extent of the decline over time in the degree to which people thought they would wear a mask and the degree to which they reacted to those who did not wear a mask differed from place to place. Furthermore, the degree to which people thought they would wear a mask was also influenced by factors such as consideration of reactions to people not wearing masks and anxiety about COVID-19. We used a discretechoic experiment to investigate people’s evaluations of the various anti-COVID measures in restaurants and found that the evaluations declined over time. The influence of gender and age, as well as the influence of anxiety about COVID-19, affected the evaluations. Thus, social norms related to COVID-19 do not change immediately with a change in official standards alone but are intricately intertwined with people’s attitudes and feelings, as well as environmental factors.