id	author	title	date	pages	extension	mime	words	sentences	flesch	summary	cache	txt
cord-266377-3krv9ekb	Nakayachi, Kazuya	Why Do Japanese People Use Masks Against COVID-19, Even Though Masks Are Unlikely to Offer Protection From Infection?	2020-08-04		.txt	text/plain	2525	141	49	In our survey, we examined six possible psychological reasons for wearing masks: three involved individuals' perception of the severity of the disease and the efficacy of masks in reducing the infection risks both for themselves and for others; the remaining three involved other psychological driving forces. By contrast, frequency of mask usage depended much less on the participants' perceived severity of the disease and the efficacy of masks in reducing infection risk both for themselves and for others. Even though the expectation of risk reduction (personal or collective) explained only small portion of mask usage, motivations superficially irrelevant to disease mitigation strongly promoted mask-wearing behavior; conformity to the social norm was the most prominent driving force for wearing masks. Despite these limitations, this study has empirically revealed that the expectation of risk reduction does not greatly promote mask-wearing countermeasures against COVID-19, suggesting that the nudge approach (i.e., taking advantage of people's conformity) may be more promising.	./cache/cord-266377-3krv9ekb.txt	./txt/cord-266377-3krv9ekb.txt