Individuals who identified more strongly with their nation reported greater engagement in public health behaviours, during the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic.
In a large international collaboration with almost 45 000 participants across 67 countries, researchers investigated self-reported factors associated with public health behaviours:
During the early stage of the COVID-19 pandemic in April and May 2020, people who reported identifying more strongly with their nation consistently reported also greater engagement in public health behaviours and support for public health policies.
Since February 2020, Associate Professor Hallgeir Sjåstad has been one of the main organizers behind a global social science study, in collaboration with Jay Van Bavel (NYU) and a core group of five researchers. The project escalated quickly, and ended up with a total team of 200 researchers.
Ceren Ay, former PhD student at NHH currently working as a researcher in Telenor, collected data from Turkey and is also a co-author on the paper.
The paper «National identity predicts public health support during a global pandemic» is published in Nature Communications.
