Cope or Perish? Managing Tipping Points in Developing Coping Strategies for Emergency Response during the First Wave of the COVID-19 Outbreak in Europe

Abstract

When the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic started to manifest itself across the globe at an unprecedented pace and magnitude, the various emergency response strategies pursued by highly affected countries in Europe raised many questions about their supposed effectiveness. To contain the outbreak, a rapid and adequate emergency response was vital to control emergent public health risks, but emergency management was challenged by large uncertainty due to many unknowns about crucial determinants of the outbreak, determining the effectiveness of the response, which was often derived from uncertain information. This paper aims to draw lessons from the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic and it presents a review of strategies for emergency response pursued in eight European countries, including tipping points that triggered strategy shifts in emergency response. The paper shows that: (i) these countries have a culturally determined preference for policy response style (Mediterranean, continental and liberal style) depending on their relative scores on power distance and uncertainty avoidance, which (ii) is reflected in the initially adopted control paradigm and the associated strategy; (iii) Mediterranean countries (Italy, France, Spain) with high levels of power distance and uncertainty avoidance have a tendency to respond to new unknown situations by deploying strong rule-based regulatory systems which offer mental security and social order, whereas continental (Germany and Austria) and liberal countries (the Netherlands, the UK and Sweden) do this to medium and much lower extents.

Taking ACTION: Identifying factors that affect public willingness to engage in emergency preparedness activities

“…Feedback from across participants highlighted the importance of providing information that was more specific to different local areas rather than generic information about the whole region. This parallels previous findings that highlight the importance of tailoring risk information for different cultures and contexts (Mascini, 1998; van der Voorn & de Jong, 2021). Participants noted that such information needs to be updated frequently to ensure that it is current, timely and indicates the likelihood of the event occurring to encourage them to act on it.…”

“…However, there are cultural differences in how risk information is communicated (Mascini, 1998). Recent research has found that Mediterranean countries with a high level of power distance and uncertainty avoidance (Italy, France, Spain) responded to new unknown situations by communicating strong rule‐based mandatory regulations (van der Voorn & de Jong, 2021). Liberal countries do this to a lower extent due to low power distance and uncertainty avoidance (The Netherlands, the UK and Sweden) but were open to trade‐offs between various interests or experiments.…”

The Active Role of the Internet and Social Media Use in Nonpharmaceutical and Pharmaceutical Preventive Measures against COVID-19

“…It is also beneficial to keep in mind that the regulatory systems to check people’s compliance with preventive measures were culturally affected. For example, a recent cross-cultural study analyzed the antipandemic policy strategies of eight European countries, and showed that whether a given country deployed strong rule-based regulatory systems was associated with power distance and uncertainty avoidance at the national level [ 61 ]. Likewise, future research could examine the generality of the current study by exploring how the current findings are replicated in other societies with different regulatory schemes of information governance online, values [ 62 ], social mentality [ 63 ], and ideology [ 64 ].…”

Deploying geospatial visualization dashboards to combat the socioeconomic impacts of COVID-19

“…This study adopts a novel approach to emphasize the role of social learning ( Coe et al, 2001 ), engaging with socioeconomic aspects of the pandemic to organize and inform communities. Our hypothesis is that disasters may provide windows of opportunity to transform traditional response mechanisms and build new narratives that the enhancement of community-based knowledge networks through tools such as data dashboards will provide pathways to a stronger and more effective model of community resilience ( Sharifi et al, 2021 ; van der Voorn and de Jong, 2021 ). Our research particularly focuses on providing a socially embedded data and visualization interface for augmenting the technological capacity of communities to comprehend rapidly evolving issues and address them in a timely and efficient manner.…”