1.5 meter distance: who, when and where?

Keeping 1.5 meters of distance was not always easy during the corona pandemic. We all remember the busy supermarket, but keeping distance could also be difficult in workplaces, for example. Were people equally hindered by such circumstances, or did groups differ in this? And did this change over the course of the pandemic? IQ Health researchers Dr. Carlijn Bussemakers and Prof. Marijn de Bruin, together with colleagues from the RIVM and the UvA, mapped these differences.
Previous research showed that some people were more inclined to keep 1.5 distance during the corona pandemic than others, but this did not investigate to what extent this behavior differed between situations. So while we know that keeping distance was more difficult in some places, it remained unclear whether this differed between groups or over time.
The researchers used unique data from a cohort study by the RIVM, in which nearly 200,000 people were asked during the corona pandemic to what extent they kept 1.5 meters of distance in various situations such as at work, while shopping or while visiting family or friends.
Cluster analyses showed that people differed greatly in the extent to which they kept their distance: some people kept their distance more often than others, both in situations where it was relatively difficult to do so (such as in the supermarket) and where it was easier to do so (such as while walking outside). Unlike previous research, few differences were found between socioeconomic or demographic groups. Only working conditions, urbanity and age played a role, and then only in specific situations. Workers in healthcare and education were less able to keep their distance at work, and residents of large cities were less able to do so outside. For younger age groups (<40 years old), social considerations played a role: they kept less distance from family, friends and colleagues. Although people kept their distance more often during periods with more corona infections, differences between age groups were also greater during those periods.
Whereas behavioral models mainly focus on attitudes and beliefs of individuals to explain (differences in) behavior, this research emphasizes the importance of the physical and social context and that its influence is not universal.

Read the publication here: Context Matters: Patterns in Physical Distancing Behavior Across Situations and Over Time During the Covid-19 Pandemic in the Netherlands | Annals of Behavioral Medicine | Oxford Academic (oup.com)