Make it a habit: how habit strength, goal importance and self-control predict hand washing behaviour over time during the COVID-19 pandemic

Objective: Hand washing has been at the core of recommendations and guidelines that aim to curb infectious diseases in general, and COVID-19 in particular. As hand washing comes down to an individual’s behaviour, we aimed to study how individual psychological variables influence hand washing over time during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Design: Over the course of 20 weeks, participants answered questions about their hand washing behaviour, goal importance, habit strength and self-control. Participants from an experimental and a control condition completed a baseline and final measurement, and the experimental condition was invited to bi-weekly measurements through reminders.

Main outcome measure: Hand washing behaviour over the past 14 days was assessed by self-report at baseline and final measurement, and additionally repeatedly over the course of 20 weeks in the experimental condition. Results: Hand washing behaviour decreased over time, but this decrease was buffered by habit strength and goal importance. The decrease was smaller in the experimental condition that received reminders every 2 weeks.

Conclusion: Sending personal reminders on hand washing behaviour contributes to hand washing behaviour. Moreover, taking habit strength and goal importance, and to a lesser extent self-control into account is important when designing interventions to promote hand washing behaviour.