Chinese cultural biases, value congruence, and support for and compliance with protective policies during the COVID‐19 pandemic

Abstract

Public support for and voluntary compliance with protective policy measures are crucial to mitigating the spread of infectious disease. However, it is unclear why and how people with diverse cultural biases support particular protective policies. Relying on the Cultural Theory (CT) of risk, we hypothesize that value congruence with social distancing and a vaccine mandate during the COVID‐19 pandemic influences the level of public support for and compliance with these protective policies. Analyzing a Chinese nationwide sample, we find that the effects of cultural biases on public support and compliance vary not only with cultural biases but by how these are mediated through value congruence with particular protective policies. As hypothesized, hierarchical cultural biases increase public support for and compliance with social distancing and a vaccine mandates both directly and (indirectly) through value congruence. By contrast, as hypothesized, fatalistic cultural biases decrease public support for and compliance with social distancing both directly and (indirectly) through lack of value congruence and individualistic biases decrease public support for and compliance with social distancing and a vaccine mandate both directly and (indirectly) through lack of value congruence. However, the hypothesized effects of fatalistic biases did not hold for the vaccine mandate. We discuss reasons why these latter hypotheses regarding the vaccine mandate were not validated and suggest that risk analysts and communicators do more to discover and explain why particular protective policies are congruent with diverse cultural values.

Cultural biases, agenda setting, and the regulation of policy processes

“…La teoría cultural del riesgo distingue entre cuatro visiones del mundo diferentes según una cuadrícula y una jerarquía de dimensiones grupales: el fatalismo, el igualitarismo y el individualismo (Swedlow, 2014; Wildavsky, 1987). Yuan y Swedlow (2024) analizan los efectos que estos sesgos culturales tienen tanto en el apoyo público como en el cumplimiento de las políticas de protección contra la COVID‐19, en particular el distanciamiento social y el mandato de vacunación, y cómo estos efectos están mediados por la congruencia de valores con las respectivas políticas. Muestran que un sesgo cultural individualista (frente a jerárquico) generalmente disminuye (frente a aumenta) el apoyo y el cumplimiento tanto del distanciamiento social como de los mandatos de vacunación, y que esta relación está mediada por una congruencia de valores negativa (frente a positiva).…”

“…The cultural theory of risk distinguishes between four different worldviews according to a grid and a group dimension hierarchy, fatalism, egalitarianism and individualism (Swedlow, 2014; Wildavsky, 1987). Yuan and Swedlow (2024) analyze the effects that these cultural biases have on both public support for and compliance with COVID‐19 protective policies, notably social distancing and vaccine mandate, and how these effects are mediated by value congruence with the respective policies. They show that an individualistic (vs. hierarchical) cultural bias generally decreases (vs. increases) support and compliance with both social distancing and vaccine mandates, and that this relationship is mediated by negative (vs. positive) value congruence.…”

Cultural worldviews and waste sorting among urban Chinese dwellers: the mediating role of environmental risk perception

“…Beliefs are seen as an important link between values and behaviors. Therefore, the influence of cultural worldview on behavior may not be entirely direct (57) but it may instead affect people's behavior through changes in their perceptions (39,58). Lacroix and Gifford's Canadian study found that climate change risk perceptions play a mediating role between cultural worldviews and barrier perceptions (59).…”