Published on 2 March 2021
The Consultative Committee decided on Friday 26/2 to 'not decide yet' and to take a time-out in order to be able to properly assess the increasing infection and hospitalisation rates. These rising figures are attributed to more contagious virus variants. This is of course a secondary reason: even more infectious variants are primarily dependent on our behaviour. And this behaviour depends on motivation and other behaviour-determining factors. This is where the shoe pinches for months now: all kinds of strategies have been deployed, ranging from motivational witticisms such as 'hang in there' or 'use your common sense', to fear induction, threats of control and severe sanctions, to culpabilisation due to a lack of civic responsibility. Unfortunately, there was little impact each time. There is no magic button to quickly stimulate motivation. This requires a coherent policy over a longer period, inspired by evidence-based insights.
Hopefully, the latest data from the motivation barometer in this report (total N = 141,340; 68% women; average age = 50) will convince policy makers to take this up. In this unique dataset, we find that voluntary motivation robustly predicts a spike in the positivity rate, in infection and hospitalization rates, and in mortality. We continuously stare at epidemiological indicators that reflect the outcome of our past behavior, while the factors that predict our future behavior receive little attention. The message of these results is therefore very clear: if you want to stay ahead of the epidemiological figures instead of always following them, you have to rely on a motivating narrative and behavioural support framework to make people feel it is worthwhile to comply with the measures. We discuss the different motivational building blocks of such a coherent switching plan to offer the population perspective and more mental peace. The gradual progress of the vaccination programme should be realistically incorporated into this plan.
Dutch
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