Social conditions and social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States

A long-standing public health measure, social distancing became a contested issue in academic literature and public discourse during the COVID-19 pandemic. This study revisits the puzzle of social distancing behaviors during the pandemic in the United States. It leverages the Fundamental Cause Theory (FCT) to examine how social and economic disparities, group norms associated with political partisanship, and states’ COVID-19 policy response shaped county-level social distancing behavior during the different waves of the pandemic in 50 states. Drawing upon nationally representative secondary data, results indicate that race, income level, income inequality, political orientation, vaccination rate, and state-level policy significantly influenced aggregate social distancing behaviors. These effects were not uniform across the different waves and suggest a complex interaction of social conditions in shaping social distancing patterns during the pandemic.