Stated preferences outperform elicited preferences for predicting reported compliance with COVID-19 prophylactic measures

•We investigated the link between economic (risk, time & social) preferences and individual compliance with government measures against the spread of COVID-19.•We mobilized a representative sample of the French population during the first lockdown.•We compare in-sample and out-of-sample predictive power of revealed and stated measures of preferences.•We found that Stated preferences are better predictors of stated compliance, if compared to revealed preferences. This article studies the behavioral and socio-demographic determinants of reported compliance with prophylactic measures against COVID-19: barrier gestures, lockdown restrictions and mask wearing. The study contrasts two types of measures for behavioral determinants: experimentally elicited preferences (risk tolerance, time preferences, social value orientation and cooperativeness) and stated preferences (risk tolerance, time preferences, and the GSS trust question). Data were collected from a representative sample of the inland French adult population (N=1154) surveyed during the first lockdown in May 2020, and the experimental tasks were carried out on-line. The in-sample and out-of-sample predictive power of several regression models - which vary in the set of variables that they include - are studied and compared. Overall, we find that stated preferences are better predictors of compliance with these prophylactic measures than preferences elicited through incentivized experiments: self-reported level of risk, patience and trust are predicting compliance, while elicited measures of risk-aversion, patience, cooperation and prosociality did not.