Individual Differences in Compliance to Covid-19 Safety Guidelines in V4 Countries

Abstract

In the study with N = 7463 participants, we aimed to corroborate the role of personality in compliance to official safety guidelines across V4 countries. We were interested if personality traits in terms of Big-5 model predict adherence to official safety measures directly or rather indirectly via concerns and trust in institutions. Results showed that all BF domains predicted compliance both directly and indirectly. Openness, Conscientiousness, and Extraversion predicted compliance positively, while Neuroticism and Agreeableness negatively. Furthermore, an indirect effect of domains to compliance via Covid-19 concerns was corroborated for all five domains. However, although Agreeableness, Neuroticism, Openness, and Conscientiousness negatively predicted trust in institutions, the indirect effect via trust was corroborated only for Conscientiousness, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism and effect size was small. When attempting to compare the results across countries, full invariance was not established. However, preliminary analysis of the regression paths is provided and discussed to inform future research.