Why they willingly complied: Ordinary people, the big environment, and the control of COVID-19 in China.

"data availability the data that has been used is confidential. acknowledgments the project was generously supported by a rapid grant from the (bcs-2032407"

"Declaration of competing interest None."

"The project was generously supported by a RAPID grant from the 10.13039/100000001National Science Foundation (BCS-2032407). Mason also acknowledges the support of the Population Studies and Training Center at Brown University, which receives support from 10.13039/100000002NIH (P2C HD041020). We are deeply grateful for the critical support of Claire Lin, who transcribed, coded, and organized the data. We are also grateful to Karina Bao and Kexin Zhao, who assisted with this work. Finally, we are grateful to our interviewees. Yifeng Troy Cai: Conceptualization, Methodology, Investigation, Data Curation, Writing – Original Draft, Writing – Review and Editing, Visualization, Project Administration, Funding Acquisition, Katherine A. Mason: Conceptualization, Methodology, Writing – Original Draft, Writing – Review and Editing, Visualization, Supervision, Project Administration, Funding Acquisition, Social Science & Medicine manuscript number: SSM-D-22-00522R1, Article Title: Why They Willingly Complied: Ordinary People, the Big Environment, and the Control of COVID-19 in China."