Global Behaviors, Perceptions, and the Emergence of Social Norms at the Onset of the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

We conducted a large-scale survey covering 58 countries and over 100,000 respondents at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic—between March 20 and April 7—to explore how beliefs about citizens’ and government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic affected mental well-being. Our analyses reveal three findings. First, many respondents indicate that their country’s citizens and government’s response was insufficient. Second, respondents’ perception of an insufficient public and government response and handling is associated with lower mental well-being. Third, we exploit time variation in country-level lockdown announcements, both around the world and through an event-study in the UK, and find that strong government actions—e.g., announcing a nationwide lockdown—were related to an improvement in respondents’ views of their fellow citizens and government, and to better mental well-being. These findings suggest that policy-makers may not only need to consider how their decisions affect the spread of COVID-19, but also how such choices influence the mental well-being of their population.

Can Psychological Traits Explain Mobility Behavior During the COVID-19 Pandemic?

“…Finally, we include country fixed effects (i.e., inclusion of country dummies to control for country-level heterogeneity) 15 . We analysed the data with three model specifications, 1) without sampling weights, 2) employing sampling weights constructed by Fetzer et al (2020) according to representation of income, 15 We model past mobility or future propensity to leave home of individual i be explained by: = + Trait + + , where is the personality trait of individual i and z is the vector of control variables which can include individual specific variables (e.g., gender), country specific time varying variables (e.g., case statistics or government policy at the time of survey completion), and the country fixed effects (set of dummy variables). education, and age and gender structure in the population in each country, and 3) sampling weights, which also take into account the size of the population of each country.…”

“…Individual-level Data. In study two we utilise micro-level data from the International Survey on Coronvirus (Fetzer et al, 2020) (N=113,083 from 164 countries between 20 March to 16…”

“…13 Study 2's data were obtained from the International Survey on Coronavirus, an independent study conducted by Fetzer et al (2020). We include a description of their methodology in the supplemental material.…”

“…In Study 2, we seek to replicate these findings at the individual level, using data from the International Survey on Coronavirus (Fetzer et al, 2020), which includes personality and demographic variables for 113,083 individuals across 164 countries collected in March and April of 2020. We again find that conscientiousness and agreeableness (but only for women) are associated with the likelihood of staying home; contrary to regions-level results, individuallevel openness to experience and neuroticism are both positively associated with staying home.…”

COVID-19, Security Threats and Public Opinions

“…Firstly, there is evidence that the health crisis has strongly affected individual behavior and beliefs. Using a global online survey answered by over 100,000 respondents from 58 countries, between late March and early April 2020, Fetzer et al (2020a) show that respondents changed their habits and behaviors in the wake of the pandemic. Whereas the response from the government and the public was deemed as generally weak, decisive actions from the policymakers mitigated misperceptions and reduced anxiety and depression.…”