RAPID: American Indian Authorities, Trust, and Collective Action during the Covid-19 Pandemic

This project will determine how citizens react to and utilize information from different sources on public health policies to inform their individual decisions on responding to the COVID-19 pandemic. The project will provide systematic and rigorous evidence on how and why citizens' perceptions of trust and legitimacy condition their response to different sources of information from authorities on public health policies. The results of this project will contribute to improving the understanding of how public and private authorities can build trust with citizens and communities through the information they provide on public health policies to combat COVID-19 and future public health crises.

The research will use multi-wave, survey experiments on rural-based national and select state populations samples to examine which sources of information providing guidelines on public health policies are deemed trustworthy and legitimate by citizens. Those evaluations in turn will be examined to determine how they influence individual choices about compliance with lockdown orders and the use of vaccines when they become available. The findings of the project will advance basic research on the causes of collective action, the public's reaction to and use of scientific information and expertise, the social determinants of improving public health policies, and the efficacy of different information strategies in times of crisis.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.