The Effect Of Social Marketing On Public Behavior In Preventing Covid 19 The Case Of Ministry Of Health In Ethiopia

The main purpose of this study was to examine the effect of social marketing used by the Ministry of Health on public behavior in preventing COVID 19.” Towards this end a quantitative research approach and an explanatory research design were employed. Views of total number of responses from 377 respondents drawn from Bole Sub City in Addis were reflected in this study. Questionnaires with closed-ended and five-point Likert scale items were used as an instrument to collect data for the research. The data collected were summarized in SPSS Version 20.0. The effect of three messages of the Ministry of Health namely wear of mask, sanitization and hand wash and social distancing on behavioral change of the respondents were analyzed. The demographic characteristics of respondents has shown that the balanced representation in term of age, gender, marital status and educational qualification were considered. The result has shown that the overall mean for the three aspects of social marketing wearing of face mask, sanitization and washing hand and social distancing, were 4.08, 3.14, 3.00, respectively which were all above the cut-off point developed by Alfarra (2009) except social distancing which indicates the effort of the Ministry created average awareness in combating COVID 19. The hypotheses were tested using statistical analysis of Pearson’s correlation coefficient and multiple linear regressions. Social marketing activities related to the use of face mask explain a weak but significant change in behavior on actually using face mask on the sample(r=0.401 at a significant level of 99%), and (r=0.39 at a significant level of 99%) on overall behavioral change. Social marketing activities related to proper hand wash and sanitization explain a weak but significant change in behavior on actually practicing proper hand wash and sanitization (r=0242 at a significant level of 99%), and (r=0.22 at a significant level of 99%) on overall behavioral change, and again when we come to social marketing activities related to social distancing there is a weak but significant behavioral change on actually practicing social distancing(r=0.235 at significant level of 0.0)and (r=0.310 at a significant level 0.01) on over all behavioral change. The overall effect of social marketing practices as shown by R square is that 20.7% of the behavioral change on COVID 19 can be attributed due to social marketing practices of the Ministry. The Beta coefficient reports have shown than message on use of face mask and social distancing have minimal significant contribution on behavioral change while message on social distancing has no significant contribution on behavioral change of the respondents. The study concluded that social marketing efforts have significant contribution on combating COVID and further suggests that wide scale research on social marketing should be conducted in Ethiopia considering varying social issues exhibited in the society

Get Full Work

Report copyright infringement or plagiarism