ESRI Discussion Paper Series No.383 Factors to Promote and Sustain the Infection Preventive Behaviors for the COVID-19

 Prevention of infection against the COVID-19 has been brought out by the development and procurement of vaccines as well as behavioral changes in people, such as wearing masks and maintaining social distance.

 In this paper, we use a survey on well-being to analyze the factors which affected people to initiate and sustain preventive behaviors during the COVID-19 pandemic. There are three key findings from our analysis.

 First, we found that being female, being elderly, having a hospital visit, having a balanced diet, having a “kakaritsuke-i doctor”, and being concerned about infections have respectively promoted an individual’s infection preventive behaviors from multiple regression analysis. 
 Next, we confirmed that taking healthier actions, being concerned about infections, and having regular employment have respectively promoted and maintained an individual’s infection preventive behaviors through fixed-effects model analysis.
 Finally, we found that the vaccination, several infection preventive behaviors, and telework were associated with the reduction in infection rates at the individual level although there are limitations in our data.

 Our results imply that narrowing down the target by social attributes when publicizing infection preventive behavior, and enhancing the public health awareness and health consciousness by promoting the use of “kakaritsuke-i doctor” are effective to promote and maintain infection preventive behavior in the extended period of time.