More Than Words: Leaders’ Speech and Risky Behavior during a Pandemic

Abstract

How do political leader's words and actions affect people's behavior? We address this question in the context of Brazil by combining electoral information and geo-localized mobile phone data for more than 60 million devices throughout the entire country. We find that after Brazil's president publicly and emphatically dismissed the risks associated with the COVID-19 pandemic and advised against isolation, the social distancing measures taken by citizens in pro-government localities weakened compared to places where political support of the president is less strong, while pre-event effects are insignificant. The impact is large and robust to different empirical model specifications, and definitions of political support and events. Moreover, we find suggestive evidence that this impact is driven by localities with relatively higher levels of media penetration, municipalities with presence of active Twitter accounts, and municipalities with a larger proportion of Evangelic parishioners, a key group in terms of support for the president.

Face Mask Use and Physical Distancing before and after Mandatory Masking: Evidence from Public Waiting Lines

“…Using contextual data in the form of the number of open shops in the surrounding, we argue that this effect is not driven by the mask mandate but by concurrent changes in the perceived risk from the virus. This is in line with an array of studies showing that the adoption of precautionary behavior against COVID-19 crucially depends on the perceived risk of becoming severely ill from the virus (Ajzenman et al, 2020;Allcott et al, 2020;Grossman et al, 2020;Harper et al, 2020;Larsen et al, 2020;Rosenfeld et al, 2020;Wise et al, 2020).…”

Inoculating Against Fake News About COVID-19

“…In the United Kingdom alone, people have set fire to least 50 phone masts in response to the 5G conspiracy (BBC News, 2020) and research finds that belief in the 5G conspiracy is linked to violent intentions (Jolley and Paterson, 2020). In addition, an analysis of over 60 million geo-coded cell phones found reduced social distancing in pro-government areas after Brazil's president inaccurately portrayed the risks of COVID-19 (Ajzenman et al, 2020). Similar analyses have been conducted in the United States in response to political polarization over COVID-19 preventative health behaviors (Allcott et al, 2020), highlighting the disruptive potential of high-profile misinformation for both individual and societal well-being.…”

Misinformation During a Pandemic

“…Adolph et al (2020) show that both governors from states with more Trump supporters and Republican governors were slower to implement social distancing policies such as stay-at-home orders and school and business closures. 8 Analyzing Brazil's case, Ajzenman et al (2020) and Mariani et al (2020) show that following public speeches of the president opposing social isolation policies, social distancing immediately fell in municipalities with higher support for the president. Egorov et al (2020) show that areas with greater levels of xenophobia and ethnic fractionalization show the greatest reductions in mobility following the first local COVID-19 case.…”