Fig 1.
Temporal context of the study.
Shown are the dates at which key social distancing measures were announced on a national level by countries in the study. The time frame of data collection (March 24–30, 2020) is highlighted in gray. Empty bars indicate that no action was announced or taken by the national government (for comparability between federal states and unitary states, we only considered announcements by the federal government in federated countries, even though there may have been actions on a local, city, or state level). For a detailed list of these government announcements, see SC Appendix in S1 File.
Fig 2.
Correlation matrix of all study variables.
Significance threshold is Bonferroni-corrected, p < 3.3x10-4. Empty cell = non-significant correlation; SD = Social distancing; Num. = Number.
Fig 3.
Main effects of spokesperson, country and age group on message sharing.
(a) Message sharing score on a 1–7 Likert scale. Error bars represent 95% CIs. (b) Corresponding, color-coded significant pairwise comparisons, accounting for multiple comparisons via sequential Bonferroni correction. Only significant comparisons are shown. The results show that the medical spokesperson Dr. Fauci achieved the highest level of respondents’ willingness to reshare a call to social distancing, whereas celebrity spokesperson Kim Kardashian was least effective. Celebrity spokesperson Tom Hanks, the Government, and the no-spokesperson conditions took a middle ground. The likelihood of message resharing increased with age and when respondents expressed positive sentiments towards the spokesperson.
Fig 4.
Country-by-spokesperson interaction on message sharing.
(a) Message sharing score on a 1–7 Likert scale. Error bars represent 95% CIs. (b) Corresponding, color-coded significant pairwise comparisons, accounting for multiple comparisons via sequential Bonferroni correction. Only significant comparisons are shown.
Fig 5.
Spokesperson-by-age-group interaction on message sharing.
(a) Message sharing score on a 1–7 Likert scale. Error bars represent 95% CIs. (b) Corresponding, color-coded significant pairwise comparisons, accounting for multiple comparisons via sequential Bonferroni correction. Only significant comparisons are shown.
Fig 6.
Spokesperson-by-likeability interaction on message sharing.
(a) Message sharing score as the standardized residual of the message sharing scores (on a 1–7 Likert scale), adjusted for all demographic and attitudinal measures (see Materials and methods: Statistical analyses). Error bars represent 95% CIs. The dashed black line (95% CI, gray band) represents the effect for the no-spokesperson condition, for which a likeability could not be elicited. (b) Corresponding, color-coded significant pairwise comparisons, accounting for multiple comparisons via sequential Bonferroni correction. Only significant comparisons are shown.