**1. Introduction**

In June 2020, more than 9 million people worldwide had been diagnosed with COVID-19, which resulted in 472,856 deaths [1]. Italy was an early hotspot, with infections increasing exponentially (R0 > 2.5) from mid-February to early March 2020 [2]. The Italian government imposed a nationwide lockdown in early March [3]. With the help of this lockdown, Italy flattened the infection curve dramatically [4].

Lockdowns have reduced the number of infections by an estimated 81 percent and have saved more than 3 million lives in 11 European countries from February to May 2020 [5]. The same report concluded that lockdowns have been the most effective government intervention by a large margin, when compared to school closures, social distancing, social isolation, and the cancelling of public events [5]. Unfortunately, lockdowns are unsustainable, and have led to the loss of millions of jobs, and economic uncertainty [6]. Lockdowns also have detrimental psychological effects, including loneliness, anxiety, depression, sleep problems, and suicidal ideation [7–10]. Feelings of isolation may have contributed to lockdown violations in both overt and covert ways.

In this work, we used the rational agent theory, studied in neoclassical economics, as a framework for understanding lockdown violations. This theory posits that individual actions are governed by the desire to satisfy needs or wants. Whatever is believed to provide the greatest satisfaction (or value) is likely to be carried out [11]. Consider somebody who is of two minds about getting a small car (which is good for the environment) and a luxury SUV (for comfort and status). Assuming that price is not a concern, the person might reason as follows: the harm to the environment is a cost that is shared by many people, while the benefit of the SUV is enjoyed solely by oneself. The person decides to buy the SUV.A COVID-19 lockdown can be viewed as a dilemma in which the common good is served by everyone's compliance, but personal interests are maximized if everyone else complied except oneself. This is an instance of the so-called tragedy of the commons [12]. A person who shops unnecessarily gains temporary relief from confinement. Since it is impossible to police shoppers if their grocery trips are truly necessary, the common good can be undermined by self-serving actions.

We can extend the SUV vs. small car analogy to consider the role of fear. Suppose that the SUV only comes in a self-driving mode, i.e., it does not allow the person to take control of the vehicle. Although generally safe, self-driving features have been shown to fail in rare occasions, resulting in death. In this modified scenario, the imagined benefits of the SUV are tempered by the small chance of dying in an accident. It would be reasonable to infer that more risk-averse people would opt for the small car with no self-driving features. This situation mirrors the COVID-19 lockdown in which an unnecessary trip to the grocery provides relief from isolation but carries a small risk of catching the virus. People with higher anxiety are probably less likely to make unnecessary grocery trips.

We hypothesized that adherence to the lockdown was influenced by psychological traits, socio-economic status, health conditions making one more susceptible to infection, and the fear of infection. Our specific hypotheses were:

