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Abstract

The abundance of information on social media, partly conflicting with government information, might negatively affect citizens’ compliance with policies. Based on Dutch representative survey data from the COVID-19 pandemic, we find that citizens who ranked social media as a more important information resource were generally less compliant with COVID-19 measures and less willing to get vaccinated. A higher ranking of social media is more strongly associated with non-compliance among citizens with lower levels of institutional trust. Based on these findings, we suggest that efforts to encourage compliance should focus not only on countering misinformation, but also on enhancing institutional trust.

Points for practitioners

Citizens who ranked social media as a more important information resource on COVID-19 were less compliant with government COVID-19 measures and less willing to get vaccinated. This relationship was strongest among citizens with low levels of trust in the institutions of government involved in managing the pandemic. To enhance compliance with policy measures, government efforts should focus not only on countering misinformation, but also on enhancing trust in government institutions.

Keywords

Social media institutional trust policy compliance COVID-19 infodemic vaccination intent

Introduction

The effectiveness of many public policies relies on citizens’ voluntary compliance (Gofen, 2015; May, 2005; Tyler, 2006; Weaver, 2014; Winter and May, 2001). The recent COVID-19 pandemic made this clear once again. Compliance with public policies is commonly explained by rational factors including a calculated risk of sanctions, normative factors including belief in the effectiveness and legitimacy of the policy, and social factors including peer pressure to comply (Im et al., 2014; May, 2004; Tyler, 2006; Winter and May, 2001). During the recent COVID-19 pandemic, governments worldwide tried to appeal to all three types of factors with ‘sermon’ types of policy incentives (May, 2004; Porumbescu et al., 2017; Weaver, 2014). Governments used information and awareness campaigns to inform citizens about the risks of the virus and appealed to people’s sense of personal and social responsibility to comply with public health measures, including social distancing and hygiene measures, and vaccines. Yet compliance varied across political orientation, economic status, risk perception, prosocial attitudes and demographic characteristics (Martinescu et al., 2023; Pedersen and Favero, 2020; Snel et al., 2023).

In today's media landscape, governments are no longer the primary information source available to citizens. Whereas legacy media generally prioritize information from government authorities (Bennett, 1990; Entman, 2004), the decentralized platforms of social media allow for information from a large variety of sources to circulate, eroding state control over information (Im et al., 2014; Van Dijck and Alinejad, 2020). During the COVID-19 pandemic, the World Health Organization (WHO) voiced a concern about an ‘infodemic’ on social media and its effects on compliance (Zarocostas, 2020). This concept which gained prominence during the COVID-19 pandemic refers to an ‘overabundance of information – some accurate and some not – that occurs during an epidemic. It can lead to confusion and ultimately mistrust in governments and public health response’ (WHO, 2021). The COVID-19 pandemic therefore presents a revelatory case (Yin, 2018) to study how social media, as opposed to other information resources, influence citizens’ compliance with policy measures. Furthermore, we consider the role of trust in the institutions of government and how this might interact with media use in affecting policy compliance. Low levels of institutional trust among parts of the population pose a governance challenge in themselves, but even more so if a relationship between social media use and non-compliance measures is stronger among citizens with low levels of institutional trust.

This article will first analyse how citizens’ compliance with COVID-19 measures and their willingness to get vaccinated is associated with their ranking of importance of social media as an information source on COVID-19. We hypothesize that a higher ranking of social media is negatively associated with compliance with COVID-19 measures and vaccination intent. Next, we analyse how differences in citizens’ levels of institutional trust impact this relationship. We hypothesize that the negative associations between social media ranking and policy compliance and vaccination intent are particularly strong among citizens with low levels of trust in the institutions of government that are involved in managing the crisis. The central question is: To what extent does citizens’ ranking of social media as a source of information on COVID-19 affect the extent to which they: (a) comply with COVID-19 policy measures; and (b) intend to get vaccinated; and how are these relations moderated by citizens’ levels of institutional trust?

This study is based on a representative survey conducted in March 2021 among the Dutch population (n = 24,227) about the societal impacts of COVID-19. At the time of the survey, the Netherlands had faced several upsurges of the coronavirus, and the COVID-19 crisis entered a critical stage. Although the Dutch government started vaccinating as of the beginning of 2021, the numbers of infections remained high and most measures to manage the pandemic remained in place throughout the spring. This included a curfew which lasted from 23 January to 28 April 2021, shopping by appointment and a set of social distancing and hygiene measures. Some other measures were lifted: high schools re-opened; young people below the age of 26 were again allowed to engage in sports activities outside; and hairdressers and other service providers could re-open their shops. In March 2021, national elections were held in which the COVID-19 measures were a major topic.

The Netherlands is a relevant context to study social media and policy compliance for three reasons. First, the Netherlands has among the highest rates of internet access, smartphone ownership and social media use worldwide (Poushter et al., 2018), which makes this country a relevant context to study the effects of social media. The most-used platforms are Facebook, YouTube and Instagram. Second, the country was coping with decreasing levels of institutional trust during the pandemic. Trust in the Dutch national government dropped from 69% in April 2020 to 49% in March 2021 (Engbersen et al., 2021b). Third, instead of opting for strict and hierarchical rule enforcement, COVID-19 measures in the Netherlands were developed and enforced in cooperation with many stakeholders (Pattyn et al., 2021) – fitting with the Dutch model of consensus democracy. Consequently, voluntary compliance was crucial for COVID-19 measures in the Netherlands to be effective.

In the remainder of this article, we first discuss current theory on the relations between social media, policy compliance and institutional trust based on public policy literature in general and literature focused on the COVID-19 pandemic specifically. We develop a conceptual model to be tested. Then, we present our data and method. The results section first presents how the use of social media to find information on COVID-19 differs among the Dutch population. Next, we test our hypotheses based on correlations and regression analyses. We conclude with a discussion of the theoretical implications and policy implications of our findings.

Theory and hypotheses

Social media use and compliance with policy measures

Social media have changed the ways in which information on public problems and public policy disseminates. Next to information which ‘cascades down’ from authoritative actors from government and politics (Entman, 2004; Im et al., 2014), information from non-state actors can also enter the stream of information, with the algorithms of social media providing a ‘pumping mechanism’ (Entman, 2003: 420) for some of this information to cascade upwards in the information stream. Information which is highly contentious, emotional and moralized in nature is prioritized by the algorithms of social media platforms as it will keep the attention of users and enables the platforms to collect and capitalize on user data (Van Dijck and Poell, 2013; Zuboff, 2019). As a result, misinformation tends to spread quicker and further than information based on expert consensus (Vosoughi et al., 2018).

Studies indeed found that during the COVID-19 pandemic, social media enabled the spread of information from different sources and of different quality, functioning as double-edged swords of public health information (Pavelea et al., 2022; Van Dijck and Alinejad, 2020). On the one hand, social media were used by government organizations and public health authorities to inform citizens about the pandemic and to promote policy compliance. Several governments, including the Dutch government, used social media campaigns and paid influencers to enhance compliance with COVID-19 measures (Han and Baird, 2024; Mansoor, 2021; Van Dijck and Alinejad, 2020). In addition, social media were used by medical staff to share experience-based information first-hand. This included dramatic images of overworked hospital workers and emotional calls to take the virus seriously and comply with measures.

On the other hand, similar to other crises characterized by uncertainty and developing expert consensus, a large diversity of information circulated on the decentralized platforms of social media. This included information which partly or fully conflicted with information from government and public health authorities (Van Dijck and Alinejad, 2020). The literature describes many examples of COVID-19 misinformation which conflicted with the best expert evidence available at the time (Hameleers et al., 2023; Pulido et al., 2020; Vraga and Bode, 2020), and of conspiracy theories which spread incorrect information about the origins of the virus and the safety of vaccines (Mari et al., 2022).

The extent of the diffusion of government information, as opposed to information (including misinformation) from other sources on social media, is the subject of scholarly debate. Evidence from a study on five social media platforms suggests that information from reliable and questionable sources did not present different dissemination patterns (Cinelli et al., 2020). A study on Twitter demonstrates that false information was more likely to be tweeted, but less likely to be retweeted than science-based evidence or fact-checking tweets (Pulido et al., 2020).

Looking into how this information affects citizens, research indicates that social media use (Bridgman et al., 2021) and trust in social media (Fridman et al., 2020) are negatively associated with accurate knowledge about COVID-19. Melki et al. (2021) found that those who trust COVID-19 information from social media are more likely to believe in COVID-19 myths and false information. Furthermore, Islam et al. (2023) found that exposure to misinformation on social media is negatively associated with knowledge about COVID-19 measures.

There is also evidence that social media affect people's compliance with COVID-19 measures. Studies have found that social media use is negatively associated with compliance with social distancing and hygiene measures (Caplanova et al., 2021; Pavelea et al., 2022; Pedersen and Favero, 2020). Other studies have found similar effects on vaccination intent, when comparing different sources of information on COVID-19 (Piltch-Loeb et al., 2021). Nicholls and Yitbarek (2022) add that although engaging with social media might not in itself predict less adoption of preventive measures, placing higher trust in information from social media than in other, more reputable information sources is associated with less compliance with lockdowns and preventive measures, and lower vaccine adoption.

Although the behavioural effects of social media as an information source on policy compliance have scarcely been studied in relation to other public issues and policies, a study by Im et al. (2014) found that in general, the more time people spend on the internet, the lower their levels of compliance with government policies. This finding from public administration literature resonates with more recent studies on compliance with COVID-19 measures. The authors suggest that whereas information from government is likely to portray a relatively unified and consistent message, the diversity of online information fosters increasingly different public opinions and citizen expectations, triggering a reduction in compliance instead of a shared sense of direction.

Based on this literature review, we hypothesize that attributing a higher ranking to social media for information on COVID-19 is associated with lower compliance with the government's public health measures. We will test this for two dependent variables: compliance with social distancing and hygiene measures, and vaccination intent.

H1a: Citizens who attribute a higher ranking to social media as a source of information on COVID-19 express lower degrees of compliance with COVID-19 policy measures.

H1b: Citizens who attribute a higher ranking to social media as a source of information on COVID-19 are less willing to get vaccinated against COVID-19.

Institutional trust and compliance with policy measures

Citizens’ trust in the institutions of government is based on their general inclination to trust as well as their short-and long-term evaluation of government performance which comprises its capacity, integrity and benevolence (Christensen and Lægreid, 2005; Zhai and Han, 2024). Institutional trust is generally considered as an important condition for compliance with government policies (Kim, 2005; Levi, 1998; Tyler, 2006). This was found in recent studies on the COVID-19 pandemic as well, which found that trust in government is a strong predictor of compliance with protective measures (Bargain and Aminjonov, 2020; Caplanova et al., 2021; Robinson et al., 2021) and vaccination intent (Engbersen et al., 2021b; Wynen et al., 2022).

Studies on the effects of social media use and institutional trust as predictors of compliance generally find that social media use is negatively associated with compliance and institutional trust is positively associated with compliance (Caplanova et al., 2021; Im et al., 2014). Islam et al. (2023) found that trust in government moderates the relationship between perceived exposure to misinformation related to the pandemic and knowledge about government measures. They explain this by the mechanism that citizens who possess higher levels of trust in government will more quickly perceive information from other sources to be misinformation (Islam et al., 2023: 581). We hypothesize a similar moderating effect of institutional trust on the relationship between social media ranking and policy compliance as well as vaccination intent. Building upon political communication literature, the underlying mechanism might be that citizens with high levels of trust in government may ignore information conflicting with government recommendations when they encounter it, or they might only be searching for information from government sources which is present on social media as well. In addition, because of social media algorithms which prioritize content that is likely to hold people's attention based on their past engagement (Zuboff, 2019), it is plausible that citizens with high levels of institutional trust are presented more often with information coming from government institutions, whereas citizens with lower levels of institutional trust might be more exposed to information from other sources. We expect that a higher ranking of social media is more strongly associated with non-compliance among citizens with lower levels of trust in the institutions of government. We will again test this for our two dependent variables:

H2a: The relation between social media ranking and compliance with COVID-19 policy measures is moderated by institutional trust, whereby lower levels of institutional trust are associated with a stronger negative relation of social media ranking with policy compliance.

H2b: The relation between social media ranking and willingness to get vaccinated is moderated by institutional trust, whereby lower levels of institutional trust are associated with a stronger negative relation of social media ranking with vaccination intent

Figure 1 (available online) summarizes our hypotheses in a conceptual model.

Data and methds

Data, sample and weighting

The data used in this study are derived from a large-scale online survey on societal impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in the Netherlands conducted in March 2021 by election research institute Kieskompas. The questionnaire was distributed among their national panel, which is a representative stratified sample of the Dutch voting population (18 + years). Additionally, the three largest Dutch cities (Amsterdam, Rotterdam and The Hague) undertook extra activities to recruit respondents from unerrepresented groups. The data was weighted to make the survey results representative for education, age, gender, region, migration background and voting behavior. Questionnaires with insufficient information about these characteristics were excluded from the sample. This resulted in a sample of 24,227 respondents which is representative of the Dutch adult population. More information on sampling and weighting can be found in Engbersen et al. (2021a).

Measurements

Our study uses two dependent variables measuring compliance with COVID-19 policy measures: Compliance with COVID-measures is measured based on a scale consisting of nine statements on social distancing and hygiene (Cronbach's α = 0.86, mean = 3.67):

At this point during the COVID-19 outbreak in The Netherlands … I stay at home as much as possible; I avoid crowded places; I avoid public transport; I avoid parks and playgrounds; I avoid face-to-face contact with friends and family; I wash my hands more often; I always sneeze into my elbow; I don’t shake people's hands; I keep one and a half meters distance [sic] to others.

These items are measured on a scale of 1–5 with 5 indicating the highest level of compliance with COVID-measures.

Vaccination intent is measured based on the question ‘When do you expect to get vaccinated?’ One of the answer options, ‘I do not want to get vaccinated’, was recoded into a dichotomous variable. At the time of the survey, 3169 respondents (15.4%) indicated that they did not want to get vaccinated.

Our independent variable, social media ranking, is measured based on a ranking of information sources on COVID-19 (choosing between News websites and apps; Television; Government websites; Newspapers; Radio; Family and friends; and Social media) in order of importance: ‘Please put the information sources below in the order in which you receive the most information about the coronavirus (COVID-19)?’ Respondents were asked to rank these sources of information with scores of 1–7, 1 being their most important information source, and 7 their least important. For reasons of clarity and redundancy in reporting, we have collapsed the middle-range values of this variable and present the results for five groups (ranks 1, 2, 3, middle and last).

To measure institutional trust, the moderator in our conceptual model, respondents were asked how much they trust Dutch national and local government authorities and the major national and regional public health institutions (Dutch acronyms: RIVM (Dutch National Institute for Public Health and the Environment) and GGD (Municipal Public Health Service)). Respondents could indicate whether they have (very) little to (very) much trust in these institutions (1–5). We take the mean score on these four items on a scale of 1–5 with a score of 5 representing the highest level of institutional trust as a measure for institutional trust (Cronbach's α = 0.89, mean = 3.24).

We control for age, gender, level of education, migration background, personal health, political orientation and socio-economic status. These socio-demographic control variables were measured with standard questions: gender: ‘What is your gender? (0 = Male, 1 = female)’; age: ‘What is your year of birth?’; level of education: ‘What is the highest level of education you have completed?’ (0 = low, 1 = middle, 2 = high); migration background: ‘In what country were you/your father/your mother born? (three questions recoded into one variable: 0 = no migration background, 1 = western migration background, 2 = non-western migration background)’; personal health: ‘How would you generally describe your health? (0 = (very) bad, 1 = moderate; 2 = good; 3 = very good)’; political orientation: ‘Where would you position yourself on a scale from left (0) to right (10)?’; income: ‘What is the combined net monthly income of your household?’ (0 = minimum, 1 = minimum to middle; 2 = middle to 2× middle; 3 = 2× middle to 3× middle; 4 = more than 3× middle). Respondents were asked to select a numerical household income category. This variable was recoded using a different minimum and middle income to standardize for single-person and multi-person households, providing more insight into households’ financial positions than exact amounts. The variable was calculated based on a minimum income of €1150 or less for single-person households and €1600 or less for families. The middle income was set at €1600 for single-person households and €2150 for families of two or more people. The final measure was Fear of income loss: ‘Do you fear to lose a large part of your income due to the COVID-19 pandemic? (0 = not afraid at all, 1 = a little afraid, 2 = very afraid; 4 = already lost income)’. Descriptive statistics on all measurements are provided in Table 1 (available online).

Analysis

We test our hypotheses using linear regression for our dependent variable ‘Compliance with COVID-measures’ and logistic regression for our dependent variable ‘Vaccination intent’. We ensured that our models adhere to the assumptions underlying regression analysis (independent errors, homoscedasticity, normally distributed errors). Low to moderate correlations were found between social media ranking and several other variables (Table 2, available online), but these correlations were not substantial enough to create multicollinearity issues.

Self-reported data on compliance with COVID-measures might be influenced by social desirability bias (Daoust et al., 2021). Although this risk is inherent to our research method, earlier research into COVID-19 survey estimates found no evidence that citizens under-report non-compliant behaviour (Larsen et al., 2020). To measure compliance with COVID-measures, we use a set of key responses similar to items used in other COVID-19-related research (Pedersen and Favero, 2020) and we assess non-response on these items.

Results

Which citizens attribute a higher ranking to social media for information on COVID-19?

First, we analysed how Dutch citizens rank social media as a resource of information on COVID-19. As Table 1 (available online) shows, 41.6% of all respondents rank social media as their least important source of information on COVID-19. However, a substantial subgroup of 19.6% rank social media in their top three information sources and for 5.8% of the respondents, social media are the most important source of information on COVID-19.

Next, Table 3 (available online) shows how people's ranking of social media differs along socio-demographic characteristics including gender, age, migration background, level of education, income, loss of income due to the pandemic, political orientation and self-reported health. Chi-square tests indicate significant differences in the use of social media as a source of information on COVID-19 on all variables. Men, younger respondents, those with a non-western migration background, lower-educated and lower-income groups, those who fear income loss or have actually lost income due to COVID-19, people with a right-wing political orientation and those reporting poor health tend to rank social media higher for their information on COVID-19 (Table 3, available online).

Social media use, COVID-19 policy compliance and institutional trust

Exploring Spearman's rho correlations between the key variables in our model (Table 2, available online) indicates that those who assign a higher ranking to social media for their information on COVID-19 are less compliant with COVID-19 policy measures and less willing to get vaccinated. Furthermore, it shows that policy compliance correlates positively with vaccination intent. A high ranking of social media as an information source on COVID-19 is associated with lower levels of institutional trust.

Next, we present multivariate regression analyses to estimate the relationships between social media ranking for information on COVID-19 and policy compliance and vaccination intent (H1a–b) (Tables 4 and 5, available online). All models include our set of socio-demographic control variables. In both tables (available online), model 1 shows negative associations between social media ranking and the outcome variable. Those who rank social media higher than other sources of information on COVID-19 are less likely to comply with COVID-19 measures and they are less willing to get vaccinated. This supports hypotheses H1a and H1b. Although the direction of this relationship and causality cannot be established with this type of analysis, it is plausible for information on COVID-19 to influence policy compliance rather than vice versa, based on the premise that information is a determinant of citizen behaviour (Im et al., 2014).

In model 2 we add institutional trust which associates positively with both policy compliance and vaccination intent. The negative effects of social media ranking slightly decrease, but remain significant for those who rank social media in their top three information sources. In model 3 we add the interaction variable of social media ranking and institutional trust in order to test whether the negative associations between social media ranking and policy compliance and vaccination intent are stronger among citizens with lower levels of institutional trust (H2a–b). We find significant interaction effects with both outcome variables, confirming hypotheses H2a and H2b (Tables 4 and 5, available online).

Figures 2 and 3 (available online) visualize the interaction effects. These graphs show that a negative correlation between social media ranking and policy compliance and vaccination intent remains for citizens with different levels of institutional trust. However, the effects differ between groups: particularly among those with the lowest levels of institutional trust (the dotted lines in Figures 2 and 3, available online), assigning a higher ranking to social media for information on COVID-19 is associated with a much stronger decrease in policy compliance and vaccination intent. This aligns with the reported effect sizes in Tables 4 and 5 (available online). The negative relation is much stronger among citizens with low trust than among citizens with moderate or high levels of trust (the striped and solid lines in the graphs).

Discussion

Our findings demonstrate that social media have gained an information function during the pandemic for a substantial subgroup of Dutch citizens. One in five (19.6%) Dutch citizens rank social media in their top three information sources on COVID-19. For 5.8%, social media are the most important source of information. The demographic characteristics of those who assign a high ranking to social media for information on COVID-19 correspond to some extent with known characteristics of active social media users such as a younger age and a higher level of education (Boukes, 2019). However, for information on COVID-19, it is not only younger people, but also the lower-educated, right-wing voters and those in more vulnerable labour market positions who are drawn to social media.

Both hypotheses on the relationships between social media ranking and COVID-19 policy compliance are confirmed: those who assign a higher ranking to social media for their information on COVID-19 are less compliant with COVID-19 measures and less willing to get vaccinated. These empirical outcomes provide provisional support for the existence of an ‘infodemic’ which undermines government efforts to contain the pandemic. Citizens who assign a relatively high ranking to social media for information on COVID-19 are likely exposed to a large diversity of information, including misinformation, which may lead them to ignore government policy and advice.

We found support for a moderating effect of institutional trust as well. The association between a lower ranking of social media with policy compliance (H2a) and vaccination intent (H2b) is stronger among citizens with lower levels of trust in the institutions of government. Interestingly, those with high levels of trust in government who rank social media as their first source of information are even slightly more likely to comply with policy measures and to get vaccinated than those who rank social media lower.

The moderating effect of institutional trust could be explained in two ways. First, citizens with higher levels of institutional trust might be using social media mainly to access government information and other trusted sources on social media, or the algorithms of social media may expose them more frequently to such information. Second, as the study by Islam et al. (2023) suggests, they might be less susceptible to information that conflicts with government advice as it is not consistent with their pre-existing views. Qualitative studies are needed to shed more light on the mechanisms behind the interaction effect.

Conclusions

The effectiveness of many policies relies on citizens’ voluntary compliance which in turn is dependent on the information citizens receive on the urgency of the policy problem and being convinced of the need for them to act (May, 2004; Porumbescu et al., 2017; Weaver, 2014). Social media have democratized the dissemination of policy-relevant information, making governments no longer the only information source, while information from other actors can ‘cascade up’ the information stream (Entman, 2003). The COVID-19 pandemic provides a revelatory case in which concerns about an ‘infodemic’ developing on social media in parallel to the pandemic were widespread. This article studied the effects of people's ranking of social media as an important information source on COVID-19, as opposed to other information resources where information from governments is likely to dominate (Bennett, 1990; Entman, 2004), on citizens’ compliance with government policy measures to fight the pandemic and their willingness to get vaccinated.

People who ranked social media in their top three information sources on COVID-19 represent a relatively small segment of the population. We found that these citizens who assign a higher ranking to social media report lower compliance with social distancing and hygiene measures and lower vaccination intent. Institutional trust moderates these relationships: we find smaller negative effects among citizens with moderate and high levels of trust in government institutions involved in managing the pandemic. These findings contribute to the literature on COVID-19 and public health communication, as well as broader discussion on social media, institutional trust and policy compliance.

In addition to studies which demonstrated the effects of specific examples of misinformation (Hameleers et al., 2023), this study found an effect of social media as an information source, encompassing the full variety of information present there, on compliance with public health measures, including vaccination. Even though studies indicate that posts referring to reliable sources prevail on social media, and that users engage more with reliable posts rather than with posts referring to questionable sources (Pulido et al., 2020), we found an overall negative association between social media use and compliance. This suggests that the overabundance of information on social media, including misinformation (even if a minority of posts), can undermine government information campaigns.

Furthermore, this research adds to current studies by demonstrating a moderating effect of institutional trust in the relationship between social media prioritization and compliance with public health measures, including vaccination. Although earlier studies have shown independent effects of information sources and institutional trust on compliance, our study found that there is an interaction effect: citizens with higher levels of institutional trust might be less likely to encounter alternative information on social media, or they might be less susceptible to this.

COVID-19 provided a revelatory case to study the relationship between social media as an information resource, policy compliance and institutional trust. We believe that our findings are relevant to other policy issues where an overabundance of information, including misinformation, circulates on social media – such as policies to mitigate climate change (Winter and May, 2001). In addition, our findings are generalizable to other consensus democracies, such as Sweden, which tend to rely on voluntary compliance rather than strict enforcement of policy measures.

This study comes with several methodological limitations. First, the cross-sectional survey design does not allow us to assess the directionality of the relationships between social media as an information source and compliance with COVID-19 measures, nor to establish causality. However, it is more plausible that information on social media influences policy compliance than the other way around (Im et al., 2014), or misinformation on social media might not be an exogenous cause of non-compliance, but rather a manifestation of the same social, political or psychological factors that lead to non-compliance (Enders et al., 2022). A longitudinal or experimental study design would be required to establish causality.

A second limitation of our study is that it is based on self-reported measures of social media ranking, policy compliance and vaccination intent. Reported answers may be subject to memory biases and social desirability. We did not directly measure citizens’ information diets during the pandemic and our independent variable, ranking of the importance of social media for one's information on COVID-19, could be underreported. On social media, information about COVID-19 is encountered not only in targeted searches, but also during day-to-day use. As a result, respondents may underestimate the importance of social media for their information on COVID-19. Non-compliance and vaccine hesitancy on our dependent variables might also be underreported because these are socially undesirable answers (Daoust et al., 2021). However, self-reported, anonymous online surveys such as ours are generally less prone to social desirability bias and we found no problematic item non-response. Non-response on these items ranged between 0.14% and 0.36%. Also, earlier research into COVID-19 survey estimates found no evidence that citizens underreport non-compliant behaviour (Larsen et al., 2020).

How can governments encourage compliance with public policies in the face of the overabundance of information, including misinformation on social media? Several government organizations attempt to counter online misinformation through fact checking and misinformation awareness campaigns (European External Action Service's East StratCom Task Force, 2022; Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport, 2021; WHO, 2021). Although experimental research demonstrates that discrediting misinformation – particularly by government authorities – can correct misperceptions, these efforts face significant challenges. Studies indicate that completely false information can be more easily discredited than partially incorrect information – which is in fact more persuasive (Hameleers et al., 2023). Furthermore, correcting misinformation increases the likelihood that people misremember information as true, which is known as a backfire effect (Nyhan and Reifler, 2010; Vitriol and Marsh, 2021). Misinformation warnings and redirecting social media users towards correct information can be effective in reducing the effects of misinformation (Lewandowsky et al., 2012). However, as the amount of misinformation increases, which happened in the case of COVID-19, these effects are likely to wear off (Kreps and Kriner, 2022). When online misinformation includes conspiracies discrediting government institutions, removal or correction of information by government actors might even reinforce these beliefs (Enders et al., 2022; Thorson, 2016).

This study suggests that efforts to encourage compliance in the face of social media infodemics should also be focused on enhancing institutional trust. Building institutional trust is not only important in itself, but it can also be a means to enhance compliance by influencing which information people receive and trust (Islam et al., 2023; Robinson et al., 2021). Studies have shown that trust in government services from which citizens receive personalized advice is generally higher (Robinson et al., 2021). This suggests that trust can best be built in personal, day-to-day contact with citizens, where the relevance of policies to people's individual circumstances, as well as changing expert consensus and proposed measures over the course of volatile policy issues, can be explained.

Supplemental Material

sj-docx-1-ras-10.1177_00208523241306410 - Supplemental material for The effect of institutional trust on the relationship between social media as an information resource and policy non-compliance: Dutch survey evidence from the COVID-19 pandemic

Supplemental material, sj-docx-1-ras-10.1177_00208523241306410 for The effect of institutional trust on the relationship between social media as an information resource and policy non-compliance: Dutch survey evidence from the COVID-19 pandemic by Rianne Dekker, Godfried Engbersen, Erik Snel and Jan de Boom in International Review of Administrative Sciences

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by ZonMw, ‘De maatschappelijke impact van COVID-19’ (The social impact of COVID-19) (grant number 10430032010034).

ORCID iD

Rianne Dekker

Supplemental material

Supplemental material for this article is available online.

Rianne Dekker is assistant professor of public governance at the Utrecht University School of Governance (USG).

Godfried Engbersen is professor of sociology at Erasmus University Rotterdam and a member of The Netherlands Scientific Council for Government Research.

Erik Snel is assistant professor of sociology at Erasmus University Rotterdam.

Jan de Boom is director and senior researcher at Risbo Research, Training and Consultancy.

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