Institutional Trust and Compliance with Measures to Fight COVID-19

Abstract

The paper investigates the causal relationship between the trust in institutions and compliance with measures introduced to slow down the spread of the novel coronavirus COVID-19 in Slovakia. In addition, the impact of socioeconomic characteristics on compliance with introduced measures was analysed. Data were obtained from a survey carried out by the Slovak Academy of Sciences on a representative sample of the Slovak population of 1,000 respondents. To derive the causal relationship between institutional trust and compliance behaviour, a probit regression model was used. Findings suggest that trust in public institutions helps to increase compliance with social distancing. In addition, some socio-economic characteristics such as employment status, age or whether individuals felt endangered by COVID-19 had a positive and statistically significant effect on compliance with measures used to slow the spread of the COVID-19 virus. Institutional trust did not have a statistically significant effect on compliance with face-covering measures.

Fatigue during the COVID-19 pandemic: Evidence of social distancing adherence from a panel study of young adults in Switzerland

“…There are numerous studies describing and investigating compliance with Covid-19 measures in various countries, particularly for the US [2][3][4][5][6][7], Germany [8], Italy [9], Switzerland [1,10], Slovakia [11], Israel [12], South Korea [13], Japan [14], Indonesia [15], or Co ˆte d'Ivoire [16]. Even though many of these studies only use opportunity samples or student samples, a few consistent results have still emerged.…”

“…Less consistent are the findings concerning age. Most studies report that younger people are less inclined to comply with Covid-19 measures [5,11], but there is also opposing evidence [2,4,14].…”

“…More interesting are findings concerning individuals' psychological dispositions like selfcontrol, trust in government and health institutions, and risk perception. Not surprisingly, subjects perceiving a higher risk of becoming infected exhibit more preventive behaviors (e. g. [7,8,11,13,14]. There are a number of studies investigating the effect of certain psychological dispositions on non-compliance with coronavirus safety measures.…”

Racial differences in institutional trust and COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy and refusal

“…Racial disparities in vaccine rates are influenced by institutional trust. Institutional trust such as trust in the government and scientific/medical community are significant factors in promoting preventative health behaviors such as compliance with lockdowns and vaccination uptake [ 13 – 15 ]. Low institutional trust was associated with lower likelihood of vaccination in a study conducted in Italy [ 16 ].…”

Quantification of Tourism Sector Parameters Related to Competitiveness of Countries According to Macroeconomic Indicators

“…This brings to the foreground the question of a deeper examination of the causal relations between the determinants of tourism development through a performance of the multidimensional studies as well as an assessment of the outputs from the evaluating and monitoring processes (Svagzdiene et al, 2020;Tarí et al, 2020). Also, the presentation of tourism plays an important role in the field of its management ( Jupowicz-Ginalska & Paták, 2018), which can be more effective in case of high levels of institutional trust (Caplanova et al, 2021). The presented research studies and the results coming from their analyses represent a valuable theoretical platform necessary to clarify the importance of the explored variables along with an identification of the potential points for subsequent research based on a deeper examination of the causal relations and revealing new determinants of tourism development.…”