Is the Unequal COVID-19 Burden in Canada Due to Unequal Levels of Citizen Discipline across Provinces?

The unequal burden of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) crisis (e.g., in terms of infection and death rates) across Canadian provinces is important and puzzling. Some have speculated that differences in levels of citizen compliance with public health preventive measures are central to understanding cross-provincial differences in pandemic-related health outcomes. However, no systematic empirical test of this hypothesis has been conducted. In this research, we make use of an exceptionally large dataset that includes 23 survey waves (N = 22,610) fielded in Canada across 12 months (April 2020-April 2021) to answer the question "Is there evidence of substantial cross-provincial differences in citizen compliance with basic public health measures designed to prevent the spread of infection?" We find that regional differences in self-reported behaviour are few and very modest, suggesting that interprovincial differences in COVID-19-related health outcomes have little to do with differences in citizen compliance, at least in the first year of the pandemic. These results have important implications. Although it is crucial that we continue to study regional variations related to the COVID-19 burden, public health agency officials, pundits, and politicians should be cautious when musing about the role of citizen compliance as the primary explanation of interprovincial pandemic health outcomes.

L'inégalité des effets de la maladie du coronavirus 2019 (COVID -19) à travers les provinces canadiennes (notamment quant au taux d'infection et de décès) est importante et intrigante. Certains ont postulé que pour mieux comprendre les écarts dans les effets de la pandémie entre les provinces, il faudrait étudier les écarts dans l'application, par les citoyens, des mesures préventives de santé publique. Toutefois, aucun test empirique systématique n'a été effectué pour valider ce postulat. Dans cette recherche, nous utilisons un base de données de taille exceptionnelle, comprenant 23 vagues d'enquêtes (N= 22,610) réalisées sur 12 mois (avril 2020- avril 2021) pour répondre à la question « Existe-t-il une preuve de différences considérables entre les provinces dans l'application par les citoyens des mesures sanitaires de base en vue de prévenir la transmission de l'infection? ¼ Nous constatons que les différences régionales dans le comportement autodéclaré sont très faibles, ce qui veut dire que l'écart des effets de la COVID-19 sur la santé entre les provinces n'avait pas grand-chose à voir avec l'application des mesures par les citoyens, du moins pendant la première année de la pandémie. Ces résultats ont des implications importantes. Même s'il est capital de continuer à étudier les variations régionales reliées au fléau de la COVID-19, les autorités publiques de la santé, les spécialistes et les politiciens, doivent être vigilants quand ils présentent l'application des mesures par les citoyens comme étant la première explication de l'écart des effets sur la santé entre les provinces.

Citizens' Willingness to Support New Taxes for COVID-19 Measures and the Role of Trust.

The COVID-19 public health pandemic has seen governments spend trillions of dollars to limit the spread of the COVID-19 virus as well as to soften the economic blow from the shutting down of national economies. Subsequent budget shortfalls raise the question of how governments will pay for the direct and indirect costs associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. In this article, we study the public's willingness to contribute through paying a new tax, with a focus on Canada. We find that both generalized social and political trust are associated with a greater willingness to support a COVID-related tax and that generalized social trust, in particular, attenuates the negative effect of an experimentally manipulated, specified level of tax burden on policy support. These findings entail important implications for the public opinion and tax policies literature, as well as for policy makers. RELATED ARTICLES: Gainous, Jason, Stephen C. Craig, and Michael D. Martinez. 2008. "Social Welfare Attitudes and Ambivalence about the Role of Government." Politics & Policy 36 (6): 972-1004. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1747-1346.2008.00147 Shock, David R. 2013. "The Significance of Opposition Entrepreneurs on Local Sales Tax Referendum Outcomes." Politics & Policy 41 (4): 588-614. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12028 Wagle, Udaya R. 2013. "The Heterogeneity Politics of the Welfare State: Changing Population Heterogeneity and Welfare State Policies in High-Income OECD Countries, 1980-2005." Politics & Policy 41 (6): 947-984. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12053.

VOLUNTAD DE LOS CIUDADANOS PARA APOYAR NUEVOS IMPUESTOS PARA LAS MEDIDAS COVID­19 Y EL PAPEL DE LA CONFIANZA: La pandemia de salud pública COVID­19 hizo que los gobiernos gastaran billones de dólares para limitar la propagación del virus COVID­19, así como para suavizar el golpe económico del cierre de las economías nacionales. Los posteriores déficits presupuestarios plantean la cuestión de cómo pagarán los gobiernos los costos directos e indirectos asociados con la pandemia de COVID­19. En este documento, estudiamos la disposición del público a contribuir mediante el pago de un nuevo impuesto. Encontramos que tanto la confianza social como política generalizada se asocian con una mayor disposición a apoyar un impuesto relacionado con COVID y que la confianza social generalizada en particular atenúa el efecto negativo de un nivel especificado de carga tributaria manipulado experimentalmente sobre el apoyo a las políticas. Estos hallazgos tienen implicaciones importantes para la opinión pública y la literatura sobre políticas fiscales, y también para los responsables de la formulación de políticas.

A guilt-free strategy increases self-reported non-compliance with COVID-19 preventive measures: Experimental evidence from 12 countries.

Studies of citizens' compliance with COVID-19 preventive measures routinely rely on survey data. While such data are essential, public health restrictions provide clear signals of what is socially desirable in this context, creating a potential source of response bias in self-reported measures of compliance. In this research, we examine whether the results of a guilt-free strategy recently proposed to lessen this constraint are generalizable across twelve countries, and whether the treatment effect varies across subgroups. Our findings show that the guilt-free strategy is a useful tool in every country included, increasing respondents' proclivity to report non-compliance by 9 to 16 percentage points. This effect holds for different subgroups based on gender, age and education. We conclude that the inclusion of this strategy should be the new standard for survey research that aims to provide crucial data on the current pandemic.

The Structure of Prejudice and Its Relation to Party Preferences in Belgium: Flanders and Wallonia Compared.

We test two assumptions of the generalized prejudice literature. First, that the structure of generalized prejudice (i.e. how prejudices are interrelated) is dependent on the intergroup context. Second, that different types of prejudice have similar political consequences and run via the generalized prejudice component. We perform these tests in the two main regions of Belgium - Flanders and Wallonia - and investigate the influence of differences in the history of immigration, experience of the linguistic and autonomy conflict, and the separate party system and political discourse (i.e. the societal and intergroup context) on these premises. We make use of the Belgian Election Panel (BEP) data that included measures of prejudice toward multiple target groups (immigrants, Flemings, Walloons, homosexuals, and Jews) and voting propensities for the main political parties. Our results show that, regardless of the differences in intergroup experiences, the structure of prejudice is identical in Flanders and Wallonia. Flemings are, however, more tolerant toward homosexuals and immigrants than Walloons. The political context and the set of potential political outlets does play an important moderating role in the translation of prejudices to party preferences: While negative attitudes toward the other regional group seem to divide the electorate in Flanders, it does not affect voting intentions in Wallonia. Anti-immigrant prejudice is crucial in both regions, but affects voters in different ways at the right-side of the political spectrum.