The ball is in the hands of the citizen. He must regain the collective sense of responsibility to comply with the corona measures, that much is clear after the measures that were announced on Friday.
The cabinet and mayors are doing something – in parts of the country closing catering establishments earlier and limiting group size at family parties and weddings – but have not yet grasped much more far-reaching measures that they also have at their disposal.
The question now is how to stimulate this collective motivation? The fact that the corona crisis has been dragging on since March does not help. Obviously, the longer freedom-restricting measures last, the more difficult it will be to stick to them. People also know this about themselves, the RIVM noted in May after conducting research during the corona crisis that the institute has repeated regularly since then. Maintaining the five-foot mark until the end of June, 80 percent of those surveyed thought they would still be able to sustain it in May. If these measures would last until the end of October, it would drop to 60 percent. The end of October is now getting pretty close.
Incidentally, the most recent RIVM behavioral study among more than 60,000 Dutch people shows that the one and a half meters is a tricky issue for many people. It is a lot more difficult to maintain than, for example, not shaking hands (90 percent find that (very) easy) or coughing and sneezing in the elbow (more than 80 percent say: easy).
The behavior of others
Everyone has their own reason for being motivated or demotivated. Take the fear of contracting the virus yourself or the fear of infecting others. The percentage of people who feel bad about becoming infected has risen steadily in recent months, RIVM concluded earlier this month: from 55 to 68 percent. People kept thinking about the same about whether it is bad to infect others.
Also important for motivation to comply with the rules is the degree to which people see the usefulness of those rules. After a dip in confidence in the necessity of keeping a distance of one and a half meters, this has returned to the level of measurements in the spring, according to RIVM. About 88 percent think that the 1.5 meter society helps (very) much to get the virus under control. Even if believing in the rules does not mean that compliance is always successful.
And then there is the behavior of others. The idea is that someone who comes into an environment where everyone adheres to the rules will also behave better. And vice versa. There is a bottleneck there, it seems. According to the RIVM, we believe that people in our environment are increasingly less adhering to the rules. Collectively there is no question in that regard.
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The cabinet is stuck in the fight against the virus: push and pull, or prohibit and close?
Citizens who may want to comply with the measures, but fail to do so, are the cabinet’s biggest problem now that the number of infections is rising rapidly. Plus the pressure from society and politics that sometimes goes against rational policy.
