Attitudes of Young People towards COVID-19 Risk Reduction Measures. An Analysis of the Impact of Different Health Campaign Strategies

ABSTRACT:
Health campaigns have been commonly used to improve the attitudes and healthy behaviours of the population. With the COVID-19 pandemic, they have become an essential tool to increase compliance with health measures, mainly amongst the young population, a group especially reluctant. The aim of the study is to analyse the effectiveness of different campaigns to improve the attitudes of young people toward compliance with health measures. For this purpose, an experimental study was carried out with 245 subjects using three health campaigns with different frames and emotions in the messages. The results show different degrees of efficacy according to the framing and emotions used. The role of self-efficacy as a moderating factor is also analysed. Implications for campaign design are derived and limitations and directions for future research are addressed.

KEY WORDS:
emotions, framing, health campaigns, self-efficacy, social marketing