Civic capital and social distancing during the Covid-19 pandemic

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Barrios, John M.; Benmelech, Efraim; Hochberg, Yael V.; Sapienza, Paola; Zingales, Luigi
• 署名单位: Washington University (WUSTL); Northwestern University; National Bureau of Economic Research; Rice University; University of Chicago
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF PUBLIC ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0047-2727
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2020.104310
• 发表日期: 2021
• 关键词: covid-19; Social distancing; Civic capital; Social capital; Compliance

摘要

Using mobile phone and survey data, we show that during the early phases of COVID-19, voluntary social distancing was greater in areas with higher civic capital and amongst individuals exhibiting a higher sense of civic duty. This effect is robust to including controls for political ideology, income, age, education, and other local-level characteristics. This result is present for U.S. individuals and U.S. counties as well as European regions. Moreover, we show that after U.S. states began re-opening, high civic capital counties maintained a more sustained level of social distancing, while low civic capital counties did not. Finally, we show that U.S. individuals report a higher tendency to use protective face masks in high civic capital counties. Our evidence points to the importance of considering the level of civic capital in designing public policies not only in response to pandemics, but also more generally. (C) 2020 Published by Elsevier B.V.