Bridging Intention-Action Gap for Healthcare Measures During the COVID-19 Emergency Period

Abstract

The COVID-19 Pandemic has proven to be a challenge which forced everyone to rapidly adapt to a new way of distanced functioning and to adopt preventive measures. With a significant body of literature dealing with the general inconsistency between intention and action, also known as the intention-action gap, the present paper aimed better grasp the citizens' tendency to engage with general healthcare measures and the commitment to the COVID-19 safety measures recommended during the period of emergency. The preventive recommendations during the COVID-19 period of emergency revealed an increased degree of efficient adoption compared to typical healthcare measures. Moreover, results are indicative of an increase in implied impediments between the beginning and the ending of the COVID-19 emergency period, without a notable broadening in the corresponding intention-action gap. This result was attributed to the commonalities between the COVID-19 emergency period and the established behavioral management strategies to reduce the intention-action gap, namely the intention actualization, “cheap talk” approach, “corrective entreaty” method, as well as “intentions implementation” strategy.  This period’s efficiency to avert the three types of mental processing barriers that hinder actions to match intentions (temporal barriers, awareness barriers, and information barriers) can be classified into three major elements: clarity, consistency, and authority.