Asocial capital: Civic culture and social distancing during COVID-19

Durante, Ruben; Guiso, Luigi; Gulino, Giorgio

doi:10.1016/j.jpubeco.2020.104342

Cited by 169 publications

(145 citation statements)

References 28 publications

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“…Some prior work on protective behaviour during epidemics has indeed found that compliance is higher among individuals with higher degrees of trust (Rubin, Amlôt, Page, & Wessely, 2009; but see Fong and Chang, 2011). Also, initial work during the COVID-19 pandemic found that geographical areas in the United States and Italy with higher levels of trust were more likely to engage in social distancing (Brodeur, Grigoryeva, & Kattan, 2020;Durante, Guiso, & Gulino, 2020). Again, it is relevant to consider both the main effects of interpersonal trust and institutional trust and their interactive effects with appraisals of threat.…”

Section: Protective Motivations During a Pandemicmentioning

confidence: 99%

Compliance without fear: Individual‐level protective behaviour during the first wave of the COVID‐19 pandemic

Jørgensen

Bor

Petersen

2021

British J Health Psychol

168

153

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Objectives. The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic required rapid public compliance with advice from health authorities. Here, we ask who was most likely to do so during the first wave of the pandemic.Design. Quota-sampled cross-sectional and panel data from eight Western democracies (Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States).Methods. We fielded online public opinion surveys to 26,508 citizens between 19 March and 16 May. The surveys included questions about protective behaviour, perceptions of the pandemic (threat and self-efficacy), as well as broader attitudes towards society (institutional and interpersonal trust). We employ multilevel and fixedeffects regression models to analyse the relationship between these variables.Results. Consistent with prior research on epidemics, perceptions of threat turn out as culturally uniform determinants of both avoidant and preventive forms of protective behaviour. On this basis, authorities could foster compliance by appealing to fear of COVID-19, but there may be normative and practical limits to such a strategy. Instead, we find that another major source of compliance is a sense of self-efficacy. Using individual-level panel data, we find evidence that self-efficacy is amendable to change and exerts an effect on protective behaviour. Furthermore, the effects of fear are small among those who feel efficacious, creating a path to compliance without fear. In contrast, two other major candidates for facilitating compliance from the social sciences, interpersonal trust and institutional trust, have surprisingly little motivational power during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.Conclusions. To address future waves of the pandemic, health authorities should thus focus on facilitating self-efficacy in the public. Statement of contributionWhat is already known on this subject?Health-related fear correlates with protective behaviour during epidemics including the COVID-19 pandemic.

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Section: Protective Motivations During a Pandemicmentioning

confidence: 99%

Compliance without fear: Individual‐level protective behaviour during the first wave of the COVID‐19 pandemic

Jørgensen

Bor

Petersen

2021

British J Health Psychol

168

153

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…If, as we hypothesize, social cohesion and a shared sense of social identity, stemming from a more embedded model of capitalism, inform greater trust in government, a pattern that we observe in Germany, we also expect it to lead to more extensive and comprehensive policies that protect and subsidize social and economic groups and more cohesive approaches to public health, compared to countries that lack the same degree of a shared sense of public purpose, such as the United States. This hypothesis finds indirect support in recent research that finds that countries and regions with greater degrees of social embeddedness and cohesion, which on study characterized as "civic capital," have displayed greater degrees of both cooperation among citizens in the wake of COVID-19 and more consistent support for publichealth measures (e.g., Durante et al, 2021).…”

Section: Comparative Macro-level Approaches To Crises: How Political Systems Reactmentioning

confidence: 97%

“…In Regions with more civic culture (and higher levels of social trust), the lockdown measures created greater mobility reductions resulting in fewer deaths for Italy and Germany(Durante, Guiso, and Gulino 2021). This leads to a cross-sectional negative relationship between levels of social trust and exposure to Covid-19 risks.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Solidarities, Fairness, and Economic Governance in Advanced Capitalism: The Cases of COVID-19 Responses in Germany and the United States

Goerres

Vail

2021

SSRN Journal

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This paper addresses the theoretical question of how competing models of social and economic solidarity shape patterns of economic governance in periods of economic crisis. Using the COVID-19 pandemic as a signal case, we seek to understand how changes in public opinion in response to similar social and economic shocks are informed by deeper ideational structures among citizens relating to their capacity for empathy, mutual support, and willingness to support and trust public policy interventions. Drawing on scholarly literatures related to moral economies and the social embeddedness of economic relationships, we undertake an empirical study of how the COVID-19 pandemic has shaped patterns of support for social and economic policies. We focus on Germany and the United States, countries with widely divergent modes of integration of capitalist markets and, therefore, potentially different levels of support for particular kinds of policy responses. We trace American and German policy responses since March 2020 across a number of domains, complemented by a systematic analysis of public opinion in the two countries, drawing from fifteen different sources of public-opinion data, in order to assess the pandemic's effects on public support for individualized and collectively-oriented policy responses.

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“…Overall, the anti-epidemic tough measures such as locking down have a serious impact on people's lives, work, civic culture, etc. (Crossley et al, 2021;Durante et al, 2021;Engzell et al, 2021;Hensvik et al, 2021). Therefore, the domestic economic recovers as soon as possible is particularly critical in the post-pandemic era.…”

Section: Pandemic Lockdown Work Resumption In Chinamentioning

confidence: 99%

Air Pollution and Post-COVID-19 Work Resumption: Evidence from China

Zheng

2021

Preprint

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To cope with the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), national or subnational regions have carried out anti-pandemic measures such as locking down, which may improve their air quality. This paper examines the relation between air pollution and work resumption from a novel post-pandemic perspective. Using unique data on detailed industrial electricity consumption in China, this paper doesn't find a positive relation between post-COVID-19 work resumption and air pollution during the early-stage recovery. This result is obtained after controlling for province and date fixed effects, as well as local weather conditions. However, the positive relation is found for a particular subsample of large industrial enterprises and April. This finding indicates that large industrial enterprises may recover first, and the resumption is progressing gradually. Finally, several policy implications are provided, which are essentially helpful for other countries’ post-pandemic recovery.

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Asocial capital: Civic culture and social distancing during COVID-19

Cited by 169 publications

References 28 publications

Compliance without fear: Individual‐level protective behaviour during the first wave of the COVID‐19 pandemic

Compliance without fear: Individual‐level protective behaviour during the first wave of the COVID‐19 pandemic

Solidarities, Fairness, and Economic Governance in Advanced Capitalism: The Cases of COVID-19 Responses in Germany and the United States

Air Pollution and Post-COVID-19 Work Resumption: Evidence from China

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