Pathology of Compliance with Covid-19 Preventive Measures in Iran: The Role of Distress by Information and Information Avoidance

The study aimed to identify the impact of distress by information and information avoidance on the compliance with preventive measures and to identify the intervention effect of information avoidance about corona virus on distress by information in compliance with preventive measures.

In terms of purpose this is applied research, and in terms of method is a descriptive-survey. The statistical population includes all students of Shiraz University in different academic levels who were studying in the even semester of the academic year 2021 (N = 16643). According to Morgan's table, 375 students selected as the research sample. Data collection tool was a combined questionnaire developed by Siebenhaar, et al. (2020) which had three subscales of distress by information, information avoidance and compliance with preventive measures. Research data was collected after confirming the validity of the questionnaire by three experts in the field as well as calculating the reliability (Cronbach's alpha) of all three subscales of distress by information, information avoidance and compliance with preventive measures (0.788, 0.856, 0.890).

The results showed that the regression model is significant for predicting compliance with preventive measures through the variables of distress by information and information avoidance (F (2, 371) = 18.029, p <.001, R2 = .089). The distress by information explains 13.2% of the variance of compliance with preventive measures (negative and significant) and the information avoidance variable explains 25.8% of the variance of compliance with preventive measures (negative and significant). Findings of block regression model also showed a significant effect of information avoidance intervention (F (2, 371) = 19.628, p <.000) on the relationship between distress by information and compliance with preventive measures with R2 = .096. The distress by information in the presence of the intervention effect of information avoidance explains 34.5% of the variance of compliance with preventive measures.

The results showed that the distress by information variable and the information avoidance variable reduce the compliance with preventive measures. Moreover, the predicting influence of information avoidance is more than the predicting influence of distress by information. On the other hand, information avoidance has a reinforcing intervention effect on the relationship between distress by information and compliance with preventive measures and reduces the compliance with preventive measures. In other words, people who scored higher in distress by information and avoided coronary information more, followed corona preventive measures less than others did.