Social Distancing, Hand Washing and Handshaking Behaviour During and Beyond Coronavirus Pandemic: A Social Marketing Perspective

Background SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19) has spread to almost every area globally, infecting millions and killing millions. Several measures have been instituted across the globe to reduce the spread of the pandemic. However, the traditional strategies employed by governments and other stakeholders to tackle COVIT-19 pandemic have not been effective in changing behaviour. Focus The study sought to investigate the influence of social marketing on eliciting voluntary adoption of Covid-19 safety behaviours during and beyond the coronavirus pandemic by integrating two behavioural change theories. Key Hypotheses the study tested the following key hypotheses: perceived susceptibility of the Covid-19 pandemic will have significant influence on motivation to engage in safety behaviour, perceived severity to the Covid-19 pandemic will have significant impact on motivation to perform the Covid-19 safety behaviours, perceived benefits for engaging in the Covid-19 safety behaviours will significantly influence motivation to engage in the safety behaviours, perceived efficacy of the safety measures to prevent Covid-19 will have positive and significant impact on motivation to engage in the safety behaviours, there is a positive association between confidence in ability to perform the safety behaviours (self-efficacy) and motivation to perform the safety behaviours, there is a positive connection between cues to action and motivation to perform the Covid-19 safety behaviours and there is a negative relationship between perceived barriers and motivation to engage in the Covid-19 safety behaviours and Motivation to perform the Covid-19 safety behaviours will result in the actual performance of behaviour to wash hand frequently, avoid handshaking, social distance, and wear a facemask. Methods The data was collected from 540 respondents in Ghana and the hypothesised relationships analysed using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). Results The study found a strong positive and significant relationship between motivation to engage in the safety behaviours and actual performance of the behaviour. The result further shows severity, perceived benefit, response efficacy, perceived barriers, cues to action, and self-efficacy as antecedents for motivation to engage in the safety behaviours during and after the pandemic. There was however, an insignificant relationship between perceived susceptibility and motivation to engage in the safety behaviours. Importance to Social Marketing Field The contribution of this research among others to the field of social marketing constitutes an extension of previous theories that will expand generalisations or fine-tune the theoretical propositions. It is worth mentioning that although the health belief model has been empirically proven for its predictive ability to explain a significant amount of variance in health-related behaviours, integrating response efficacy and motivation from the protection-motivation theory in our model provides a high explanatory power of the model. The study, thus, contributes to the theory-building effort in social marketing. Limitations Since this study only concentrated on residents in Accra, we do not assume that the findings reflect the views of the general Ghanaian population. This may limit the generalisability of the results. Future research may consider collecting data from the general Ghanaian population.