In a newly published paper in Nature Human Behaviour, Adam Brzezinski and co-authors analyse how compliance with lockdown policies was influenced by science skepticism and attitudes towards topics of scientific consensus. Using cell phone location data for the United States, the authors demonstrate that the proportion of people who stayed at home following lockdowns was significantly lower in counties with a high concentration of climate change skeptics. These results are robust to controlling for other potential drivers of differential physical distancing, such as political partisanship, income, education and COVID severity.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-021-01227-0