As Taiwan, Hong Kong, South Korea, and other countries with almost universal masking have been some of the most successful at reducing daily case and death rates, the United States has largely trended in the other direction, setting national and state records for daily new cases of COVID-19 at the end of June 2020. Wearing a mask in public is currently a controversial and politicized issue in the United States, even with case evidence from other countries that face coverings help to control the spread of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Additionally, mask mandates are necessary to increase mask wearing among the public to a level required to mitigate the spread of COVID-19. Thus, gender, age, and location factor into whether shoppers in the United States wear a mask or face covering voluntarily. Mask mandates enacted in late July and August increased mask-wearing compliance to over 90% in all groups, but a small percentage of resistors remained. Additionally, the odds of observing a mask on an urban or suburban shopper were ~4x that for rural areas. At that time, the odds of an individual wearing a mask increased significantly with age and was also 1.5x greater for females than males. Approximately 41% of the June sample wore a mask. To understand the demographics of mask wearers and resistors, and the impact of mandates on mask-wearing behavior, we observed shoppers ( n = 9935) entering retail stores during periods of June, July, and August 2020. Masks are an effective tool in combatting the spread of COVID-19, but some people still resist wearing them and mask-wearing behavior has not been experimentally studied in the United States.
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