| Abstract | Governments responding to the 2020 coronavirus pandemic have forced billions of people around the world to stay at home and reduce the number of social interactions to stop the spread of the virus. While a multitude of health authorities and governmental bodies work continuously to mitigate the effects of the pandemic on individuals, conspiracy theories regarding the COVID-19 pandemic, its origins, and the severity of the virus have challenged these efforts. There is so much variation in belief in COVID-19 conspiracy theories, both between individuals (some people believe more than others) and between countries (conspiracy theories are more popular in some countries than others). In this research, I attempt to answer why we see this variation and how these variations impact people's health behaviors during the pandemic by performing a cross-sectional study in U.S. states with the least restrictive COVID-19 measures, and U.S. states where COVID-19 measures were strictly imposed. A survey is conducted to survey participants in the United States about popular COVID-19 conspiracy theories in order to measure the average belief in conspiracy of individuals. From my analysis, in California and New York, states with the strictest COVID-19 regulations, people were less likely to have a higher belief in the two COVID-19 conspiracy theories I discuss. For two of the least restrictive states, Florida and Texas, the analysis appears to show that the belief in conspiracy could still be largely decided based on one's party identification, despite the level of restrictiveness in the state. |
