Dissertation Appendix 3: Social Norms under Uncertain Times: A dynamic study of Stay-At-Home and Vaccination Rates During the COVID-19 Pandemic
My final article takes a deeper dive into the formation of social norms governing health behaviors in cases of extreme uncertainty using the cases of both stay-at- home rates and vaccination rates as responses to public health recommendations to mitigate the COVID-19 pandemic. Using theories like associative diffusion and the integrated theoretical framework of norms, I test models of behavioral adaption to public health recommendations and patterns of complex contagion (the need for repeated exposures to something novel for it to diffuse) using linear mixed effects models. These models show that complex contagion is a valid framework for the social contagion of new norms during COVID-19. Importantly, I find a novel mod- erating effect of signal discordance, the contextual diversity of signals received by an ego. If there is diversity in the information received by an ego, contagion is less likely to occur. This paper shows that the contagion process cannot be fully understood without looking at the context of each exposure to a contagion within the range of contagions one experiences.
Keywords: Social Networks, Complex Contagion, Social Norms, Health Behav- ior, Diffusion
This repository holds the code for analysis for this chapter. See the entire dissertation here