Motivation and emotion/Book/2026/Hygiene motivation

Hygiene motivation:
What motivates maintenance of personal hygiene?

Overview

Scenario Figure 1. Washing hands became a more frequent hygiene behaviour during the COVID-19 pandemic. You became increasingly aware of your own hygiene when the COVID-19 pandemic took over our lives in 2020. In the beginning, you were motivated by the fear of infection and desire to protect your loved ones. You washed your hands more frequently, used hand sanitiser after touching surfaces in public, cleaned your phone, and became more aware of how germs are passed on from person to person. As time passed, these hygiene behaviours became less about COVID-19, and more about feeling clean, easing the anxiety of spreading germs and keeping up with the standards of our society as encouraged during the pandemic. Even though the threat of COVID-19 has decreased immensely, you continue to wash your hands when you arrive home, sanitise after using public transport, and avoid sharing personal items when someone is sick. This displays how emotions and societal expectations can initially motivate our behaviour, while repetition, personal values and habit formations can maintain these behaviours over the course of our lives.

• Societal expectations can influence engagement of hygiene behaviours
• Education regarding the purpose of hygiene behaviours is important
• Hygiene behaviours can develop into habits over time
• Socio-economic factors can impact the maintenance of personal hygiene
• Emotions can impact hygiene motivation

Focus questions What are the core motivators for personal hygiene? How did the COVID-19 pandemic influence motivation to maintain personal hygiene? How do societal expectations influence one’s motivation to maintain personal hygiene? Are theoretical perspectives contributing to our understanding of motivation towards personal hygiene? Do emotions motivate people to maintain hygiene behaviours?

Core motivators of personal hygiene

Personal hygiene can be motivated by a range of factors. The core motivators for personal hygiene are explored below.

Societal expectations

• Norms, peer pressure, and group identity can shape hygiene behaviours (Laursen & Faur, 2022).
• Some hygiene behaviours are engaged with purely due to conformity or fear of judgement from others as opposed to a healthy practice (Pilli et al., 2024).
• Example using a family scenario, where one child is encouraged to shower daily, and the other every second day. Are people more motivated to engage in personal hygiene when encouraged by those close to them?

Education and understanding of hygiene practices

Figure 2. Public health messaging to promote proper hand washing hygiene in schools.

• Knowledge of the spread of disease through public health messaging (see Figure 2) or learning can influence motivation and engagement with behaviours (Bloomfield & Ackerley, 2023).

• Understanding the reasons behind hygiene practices and their effectiveness can motivate individuals to engage with them, especially to avoid contracting a disease.
• During COVID-19, which will be discussed later in this chapter, health messaging provided explanations as to why washing your hands for 20 seconds with warm water and soap was a vital hygiene behaviour to avoid contracting the illness (World Health Organisation, 2025).

Habit formation

• Hygiene practices can become second nature through repetition and reinforcement (Singh et al., 2024).
• Brushing teeth, showering, and changing clothes are all personal hygiene behaviours that are second nature to many individuals.
• What contributes to formation of habits?

Emotions

• Disgust and fear of illness can be drivers for hygiene behaviour in the same way depression and executive dysfunction can act as barriers (Ghassemi et al., 2023).
• Explore levels of fear, including for self and loved ones.
• Explore depression and executive dysfunction specific barriers to personal hygiene.

COVID-19 as a catalyst for personal hygiene

COVID-19 was a global pandemic that took over the world in 2020. From lockdowns to masks, hygiene behaviours changed drastically for individuals across the globe (World Health Organisation, 2025).

• Increased hygiene engagement
  • Handwashing as a more regular practice, sanitiser stations in public spaces, mask hygiene (see Figure 3), disinfecting and cleaning of surfaces after use (World Health Organisation, 2025).

Figure 3. Woman wearing mask on public transport during COVID-19 pandemic.

• Risk perception and emotions
  • Perceived threat or vulnerability to COVID-19 for self or loved ones increased practicing of hygiene behaviours. Motivational influence of fear and uncertainty (Miller et al., 2020).

• Compliance and conformity
  • Government mandates (quarantine, isolation, etc.) and collective responsibility of community increased motivation to engage in behaviours. Conforming to the majority, where most people engaged in COVID-19 protocols and influenced others to do the same (Miller et al., 2020).

• Normalisation post-pandemic
  • In 2026, many hygiene practices that increased in the pandemic have not reduced, and are the new 'normal'. Social distancing has become second nature to the extent where people judge those who stand too close to others. Wearing a mask when sick or feeling vulnerable has become a more common practice, and hand sanitiser is available in more public spaces than before the pandemic (Ali et al., 2023).

Theoretical perspectives

What can assist in understanding the motivation of hygiene from a theoretical perspective?

Health belief model

• People decide whether to engage or perform a health behaviour based on cognitive evaluations, as explored below (Alyafei & Easton-Carr, 2024).
  • Perceived susceptibility
  • Perceived severity
  • Perceived benefits
  • Perceived barriers
  • Cues to action
  • Self-efficacy
• How can this relate to maintenance of personal hygiene?
• How does this help us to understand why people are motivated to engage with personal hygiene behaviours?

Theory of planned behaviour

• Behaviour is driven by intention, intention is shaped by three core components (see Figure 4):
  • Attitude toward the behaviour (is hygiene beneficial or not?)
  • Subjective norms (conformity in relation to motivation)
  • Perceived behavioural control (will it be performed successfully, involves access to resources etc.)
• Provide an example of this model using the scenario of COVID-19 in overview

Figure 4. Theory of planned behaviour diagram.

• These components combine into behavioural intention and can help predict if someone will actually engage in hygiene behaviours (Bosnjak et al., 2020).

Quiz Which theory involves three core components? Theory of planned behaviour Health belief model

Cultural and economic context

Recognising standards of hygiene cross-culturally is important to be able to understand how and why people keep up with personal hygiene.

Cross-cultural norms

• Personal hygiene expectations and standards can differ between cultures.
• Hand washing, oral care, and even spitting can be expected at one rate in one culture and a completely different rate in the next.
• Understanding the definition or standard of hygiene in certain cultures can assist in the understanding of motivational factors behind the behaviour (Eriksson et al., 2021).

Economic constraints

• Access to water, sanitation, and hygiene products can influence individual's engagement and maintenance of hygiene behaviours.
• Individuals in developing countries may be motivated to engage in hygiene behaviours, but are unable to due to a lack of resources such as hot water, clean clothes, or menstruation products (Rossouw & Ross, 2021).

Figure 5. School children utilising an outdoor tap to wash their hands.

• Figure 5 displays an example hygiene practices in countries without adequate infrastructure.

Conclusion

• There are a variety of motivating factors for personal hygiene, with societal expectations and emotions being highly influential.
• COVID-19 allowed individuals to understand the benefits of some hygiene practices, with routines that were popular during the pandemic remaining in 2026.
• Personal hygiene can differ across socio-cultural backgrounds, and core motivators may look different cross-culturally.
• Theoretical perspectives such as the health belief model and theory of planned behaviour can deepen the understanding behind motivation and maintenance of personal hygiene.

See also

• Motivation and emotion/Book/2024/Disgust and hygiene (Book chapter, 2024)
• Motivation and emotion/Book/2018/Conformity and emotion (Book chapter, 2018)
• Public health mitigation of COVID-19 (Wikipedia)

References

Ali, A. S., Mekonen, Y., & Tesfahun, T. (2023). Hygiene behavior and COVID-19 pandemic: Opportunities of COVID-19-Imposed changes in hygiene behavior. INQUIRY: The Journal of Health Care Organization, Provision, and Financing, 60(1). https://doi.org/10.1177/00469580231218421

Alyafei, A., & Carr, R. E. (2024). The health belief model of behavior change. StatPearls Publishing. National Library of Medicine. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK606120/

Bloomfield, S. F., & Ackerley, L. (2023). Developing better understanding of hygiene is key to developing hygiene behaviour change in home and everyday life settings. Perspect Public Health, 144(6), 175791392311637–175791392311637. https://doi.org/10.1177/17579139231163734

Bosnjak, M., Ajzen, I., & Schmidt, P. (2020). The theory of planned behavior: Selected recent advances and applications. Europe’s Journal of Psychology, 16(3), 352–356. NCBI. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.5964/ejop.v16i3.3107

Eriksson, K., Dickins, T. E., & Strimling, P. (2021). Hygiene norms across 56 nations are predicted by self-control values and disease threat. Current Research in Ecological and Social Psychology, 2(1), 100013. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cresp.2021.100013

Ghassemi, E., Astrid Hasund Thorseth, Karine Le Roch, Heath, T., & White, S. (2023). Mapping the association between mental health and people’s perceived and actual ability to practice hygiene-related behaviours in humanitarian and pandemic crises: A scoping review. PLOS ONE, 18(12). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0286494

Laursen, B., & Faur, S. (2022). What does it mean to be susceptible to influence? A brief primer on peer conformity and developmental changes that affect it. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 46(3), 222–237. https://doi.org/10.1177/01650254221084103

Miller, G. J., Hartman, T. K., Levita, L., Martinez, A. P., Mason, L., McBride, O., McKay, R., Murphy, J., Shevlin, M., Stocks, T. V. A., Bennett, K. M., & Bentall, R. P. (2020). Capability, opportunity, and motivation to enact hygienic practices in the early stages of the COVID‐19 outbreak in the United Kingdom. British Journal of Health Psychology, 25(4), 856–864. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjhp.12426

Pilli, L., Veldwijk, J., Swait, J. D., Donkers, B., & de Bekker-Grob, E. W. (2024). Sources and processes of social influence on health-related choices: A systematic review based on a social-interdependent choice paradigm. Social Science & Medicine, 361(1). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2024.117360

Rossouw, L., & Ross, H. (2021). Understanding period poverty: Socio-economic inequalities in menstrual hygiene management in eight low- and middle-income countries. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 18(5), 2571. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18052571

Singh, B., Murphy, A., Maher, C., & Smith, A. E. (2024). Time to form a habit: A systematic review and meta-analysis of health behaviour habit formation and its determinants. Healthcare, 12(23), 2488. https://doi.org/10.3390/healthcare12232488

World Health Organization. (2025). Coronavirus disease (COVID-19). https://www.who.int/health-topics/coronavirus#tab=tab_1

External links

• Support if you are experiencing anxiety or depression (Beyond Blue)
• Tips for good hygiene podcast (Spotify - Sandra Keyes)
• Why is hygiene so important? (Hygiene for Health)