Photo by makcedward from unsplash
Significance Differences between Democrats and Republicans in rates of wearing a mask to stop the spread of COVID-19 are associated with the partisan balance of a neighborhood. The difference in… Click to show full abstract
Significance Differences between Democrats and Republicans in rates of wearing a mask to stop the spread of COVID-19 are associated with the partisan balance of a neighborhood. The difference in rates grew larger as the share of Republicans in a neighborhood increased. This finding appears to be driven by decreased rates of mask wearing by Republicans who live among increasing numbers of Republicans (and not by Democrats in the same neighborhood). Theories about social pressure suggest these findings may be driven by the politicized and publicly observable nature of wearing a mask relative to other COVID-19 mitigation strategies, like vaccination. Neighborhood partisan composition was only weakly related to uptake of the COVID-19 vaccine and unrelated to uptake of flu vaccines.
Journal Title: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
Year Published: 2022
Link to full text (if available)
Share on Social Media: Sign Up to like & get
recommendations!