What is it about?
Governments around the world have implemented a vast number of strict public health measures, such as lockdown and social distancing. However, in democratic societies, governments cannot enforce them by means of coercion or by monitoring and controlling the whole society is neither feasible nor desirable. Moreover, the effectiveness, e.g., lower transmission rate of infection, and the efficiency, e.g., lower monitoring and enforcement costs, of these policies depend largely on behavior adaption and on individual commitment and careful preparedness We study how satisfaction with government efforts to respond to the COVID-19 crisis affects compliance with pandemic mitigation measures.
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Why is it important?
From a health policy perspective, uniform health measures that treat all people symmetrically can bear larger social and economic costs compared to targeted measures that differentiate between risk and non-risk groups. This is particularly the case whenever the short-term costs, e.g., imposing strict lockdowns and social distancing, are perceived more directly than medium- and long-run benefits, e.g., well-functioning healthcare systems. As a consequence, a gap may arise between the individual incentives to comply with public health measures and the socially desired level of compliance. This study addresses the question of whether increased satisfaction with government pandemic management induces more compliance with public health measures, thereby reducing the gap between individual’s perceived costs of compliance and their perceived advantages of compliance for society.
Perspectives
Overall, our findings provide several important insights. First, they highlight that the efficacy of COVID-19 mitigation measures depends, inter alia, on individual preferences for government policy. Second, political attitudes and sources of information seem to play an important role in how a society responds during a pandemic crisis. They shape confidence and trust in institutions and government action. Third, the efficacy of uniform policy measures depends on the costs and benefits of social action. Thus, policymakers need to take into account individual preferences for social action to assess the net effects of uniform policies on society. Finally, our results indicate that the effectiveness of policy measures in various domains, such as the health system, social security or taxation, especially during pandemic crises, need to carefully consider individual preferences for social action and provide targeted information.
Sekou Keita
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Satisfaction with pandemic management and compliance with public health measures: Evidence from a German household survey on the COVID-19 crisis, PLOS One, February 2023, PLOS,
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0281893.
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