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

Lukas Hensel; Marc Witte; A Stefano Caria; Thiemo Fetzer; Stefano Fiorin; Friedrich M Götz; Margarita Gomez; Johannes Haushofer; Andriy Ivchenko; Gordon Kraft-Todd; Elena Reutskaja; Christopher Roth; Erez Yoeli; Jon M Jachimowicz

doi:10.1016/j.jebo.2021.11.015

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

J Econ Behav Organ. 2022 Jan:193:473-496. doi: 10.1016/j.jebo.2021.11.015. Epub 2021 Nov 19.

Authors

Affiliations

¹ Guanghua School of Management, Peking University, China.
² IZA - Institute of Labor Economics, Bonn, Germany.
³ University of Warwick, United Kingdom.
⁴ Bocconi University and IGIER, Italy.
⁵ University of British Columbia, Canada.
⁶ Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford, United Kingdom.
⁷ Stockholm University, Sweden.
⁸ London School of Economics and Political Science, United Kingdom.
⁹ Boston College, United States.
¹⁰ IESE Business School, Spain.
¹¹ University of Cologne, Germany.
¹² MIT Sloan School of Management, United States.
¹³ Harvard Business School, United States.

Abstract

We conducted a large-scale survey covering 58 countries and over 100,000 respondents between late March and early April 2020 to study beliefs and attitudes towards citizens' and governments' responses at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Most respondents reported holding normative beliefs in support of COVID-19 containment measures, as well as high rates of adherence to these measures. They also believed that their government and their country's citizens were not doing enough and underestimated the degree to which others in their country supported strong behavioral and policy responses to the pandemic. Normative beliefs were strongly associated with adherence, as well as beliefs about others' and the government's response. Lockdowns were associated with greater optimism about others' and the government's response, and improvements in measures of perceived mental well-being; these effects tended to be larger for those with stronger normative beliefs. Our findings highlight how social norms can arise quickly and effectively to support cooperation at a global scale.