Public Support for Government Responses Against COVID-19: Assessing Levels and Predictors in Eight Western Democracies During 2020

Abstract

Government responses against COVID-19 has been met with salient protests across multiple Western democracies. Such protests have received significant media attention but we know little about the extent to which they reflect the views of the broader public. To fill this lacuna, this manuscript investigates how citizens across a number of Western democracies evaluate the interventions imposed by their government to contain the COVID-19 pandemic. Relying on large-scale, representative surveys from eight countries (Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, United Kingdom, United States and Sweden), we investigate how pandemic-specific and broader political attitudes correlate with support for government lockdowns in the first wave of the pandemic (March 19 -- April 8), a period hallmarked by stringent policies in all of our countries. We find medium to high levels of government support in all eight countries. Furthermore, our results suggest that these levels of support are generated by a unique coalition of fearful, prosocial and knowledgable individuals. While such groups are often political opponents, the unprecedented nature of the COVID-19 pandemic aligns their interests.

Political Identity Over Personal Impact: Early U.S. Reactions to the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…As well, political self-identification can be a poor measure or political ideology, and that values-based questionnaires more accurately index political identity (Greene, 1999;Bankert et al, 2017;Huddy and Bankert, 2017). Nevertheless, the strong effects of selfidentified political identity observed here join a growing body of literature regarding partisan effects on pandemic related attitudes and beliefs (Conway et al, 2020;Jørgensen et al, 2020) and the complications this poses for its management (Clinton et al, 2021;Gollwitzer et al, 2020;Green et al, 2020). This suggests the value of further research and consideration of both normative value differences and partisan polarization in crafting effective management of future pandemics.…”

Effect of the COVID-19 Pandemic and Big Five Personality on Subjective and Psychological Well-Being

“…There is now also an emerging literature on the relationship between personality and well-being during various phases of the COVID-19 pandemic (e.g., Jørgensen et al, 2020;Kroencke et al, 2020;Michinov & Michinov, 2020;Modersitzki et al, 2020;Qian & Yahara, 2020;Russo et al, 2020;Zajenkowski et al, 2020). However, the lack of a pre-COVID comparison group in this research makes it unclear whether the relationship between personality and well-being is altered by the pandemic.…”

COVID-19 Protective Behaviors Are Forms of Prosocial and Unselfish Behaviors

“…Many studies have confirmed the link between personal fear of COVID-19 and protective behaviors (e.g., Harper et al, 2020). However, in some studies, the measure of worry about the consequences of the novel coronavirus was not separated from worry for oneself, family, and close friends, but the overall score on worry showed a substantive positive correlation with protective behaviors across different countries (Jørgensen et al, 2020). Therefore, fear of the pandemic should be taken into account as a strong context-related state factor in the explanation of compliance with protective measures.…”