Culture and contagion: Individualism and compliance with COVID-19 policy

•There is significant variation in people’s compliance with lockdown measures introduced by governments to curb the spread of the COVID-19.•Much of the variation can be explained by different cultural traits.•Individualism, which emphasises personal freedom, makes government intervention harder, whe...

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Vydané v:Journal of economic behavior & organization Ročník 190; s. 191 - 200
Hlavní autori: Chen, Chinchih, Frey, Carl Benedikt, Presidente, Giorgio
Médium: Journal Article
Jazyk:English
Vydavateľské údaje: Netherlands Elsevier B.V 01.10.2021
Predmet:
Compliance
COVID-19
Culture
Individualism
Mobility
Public policy
Social distancing
COVID-19
I18
Compliance
Social distancing
Individualism
Z1
Mobility
H12
H11
Public policy
Culture
ISSN:0167-2681, 1879-1751, 0167-2681
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Shrnutí:•There is significant variation in people’s compliance with lockdown measures introduced by governments to curb the spread of the COVID-19.•Much of the variation can be explained by different cultural traits.•Individualism, which emphasises personal freedom, makes government intervention harder, whereas collectivism, which emphasises the wellbeing of the group, makes collective action easier.•We conclude that cultural factors play a critical role in successful policy implementation. In the first wave of the pandemic, places where geographic mobility declined more rapidly saw fewer cases of COVID-19. And yet, there is significant variation in people’s compliance with the lockdown measures introduced by governments in order to curb the spread of the virus. In this paper, we show that much of this variation can be explained by different cultural traits. Specifically, we advance the hypothesis that individualism, which puts greater value on personal freedom, makes government intervention harder, whereas collectivism, which emphasises the wellbeing of the group, makes collective action easier. We find support for these ideas across 111 countries, but also when exploiting within country variation in the two largest economies in the world: China and the United States. Across a host of specifications, people were less abiding by the lockdown rules in places with greater prevalence of individualistic cultural traits. We conclude that cultural factors play a critical role in successful policy implementation.
Bibliografia:ObjectType-Article-1
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ISSN:0167-2681
1879-1751
0167-2681
DOI:10.1016/j.jebo.2021.07.026