What’s the evidence on people’s coronavirus perceptions? (Sonia Oreffice and Climent Quintana-Domeque)

By Sonia Oreffice and Climent Quintana-Domeque

Amid the COVID-19 crisis in the United Kingdom, we formulated specific hypotheses and questions that were pre-registered in AsPredicted (#38962) on 10 April 2020. We launched an online survey (containing an experiment) in Prolific on a sample of the UK general population representative by age, sex and ethnicity on 11 April 2020. The survey contained questions asked before the experiment, and questions asked after the experiment.

We highlight the following:

1. 48% (57%) of respondents are very concerned about getting (spreading) coronavirus;
2. 46% of respondents did not go out of their homes the day before the survey, whereas only 10% went out twice or more;
3. 26% (57%) of respondents have disposable face masks (disposable gloves) at home.