The Role of Collaboration in Complying With COVID-19 Health Protective Behaviors: A Cross-National Study

Abstract

On March 11, COVID-19 was declared a pandemic. As the virus spread, governments called on citizens to comply with handwashing and social distancing behaviors. We use survey data from Finland and the United States to examine whether collaborative dimensions help predict compliance with health protective behaviors related to combatting COVID-19. We also investigate whether these factors’ influence on compliance varies between a market regime such as the United States and a more statist regime such as Finland. Our findings provide important insight for public administrators in crafting messages to the public that emphasize citizens’ collaborative role in combatting a pandemic.

When trust is not enough. A longitudinal analysis of political trust and political competence during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in Finland

“…The second stage of our study supported the hypothesis (3.1) that people's compliance with the recommendations was linked to their trust in political institutions. This result is in line with recent findings from various countries highlighting the importance of political and institutional trust in pandemic management (Bargain and Aminjonov, 2020;Devine et al, 2021;Sedgwick et al, 2021). Our study also supported the hypothesis (3.2) suggesting that compliance with recommendations was negatively associated with subjective political competence.…”

“…At the second stage of the study, we analyzed to what extent political trust and competence were associated with compliance with authorities' health recommendations. For a dependent variable, we focused on social distancing as a popular health-protection measure for compliance during the COVID-19 outbreak (e.g., Sedgwick et al, 2021). We approached this variable solely in the final round of the survey (t3), in which we asked to what extent the following statements describe respondents: 'I have limited my time spent in public places', 'I have limited my time spent with friends', 'I have limited my time spent with relatives', and 'I have limited my time spent with people in at-risk groups'.…”

“…The significance of trust was revealed in the first wave of the pandemic, as various restrictions and recommendations were introduced more quickly and COVID-related mortality progressed more slowly in countries with high confidence in political institutions (Oksanen et al, 2020;Elgar et al, 2020). Other studies also showed a linkage between greater trust in political institutions and increased compliance with COVID-19 mitigation strategies (Hafner-Fink and Uhan, 2021;Madsen et al, 2020;Olsen and Hjorth, 2020;Sedgwick et al, 2021). The previous findings also suggested that the COVID-19 outbreak increased trust in political authorities from an initial phase to an acute phase in the spring of 2020, thus reinforcing the democratic status quo (Jennings, 2020;De Vries et al, 2021;Amat et al, 2020;Esaiasson et al, 2021;Groeniger et al, 2021).…”

Effects of local government social media use on citizen compliance during a crisis: Evidence from the COVID‐19 crisis in China

“…Governments proactively encourage citizen compliance through incentives and sanctions, allocation of resources, and provision of information (Weaver, 2014 ). In addition, governments' political characteristics, such as legitimacy (McMann, 2016 ), ideology (Sedgwick et al, 2021 ), and incumbent partisanship (Grossman et al, 2020 ), can also explain compliance.…”

“…Algara et al ( 2021 ) investigate the relationship between individual demographic characteristics and compliance during the pandemic. Sedgwick et al ( 2021 ) compare citizen compliance behaviors in countries with different political systems during the pandemic. Barrios et al ( 2021 ) identify the impact of civic capital on citizen compliance with stay‐at‐home orders during the pandemic.…”