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Political beliefs affect compliance with government mandates.

ABSTRACT: We use the state-mandated stay-at-home orders during the coronavirus pandemic as a setting to study whether political beliefs inhibit compliance with government orders. Using geolocation data sourced from smartphones, we find residents in Republican counties are less likely to completely stay at home after a state order has been implemented relative to those in Democratic counties. Debit card transaction data shows that Democrats are more likely to switch to remote spending after state orders are implemented. Heterogeneity in factors such as Covid-19 risk exposure, geography, and county characteristics do not completely rule out our findings, suggesting political beliefs are an important determinant in the effectiveness of government mandates. Political alignment with officials giving orders may partially explain these partisan differences.

SUBMITTER: Painter M

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9754698 | biostudies-literature | 2021 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Political beliefs affect compliance with government mandates.

Painter Marcus M Qiu Tian T

Journal of economic behavior & organization 20210402

We use the state-mandated stay-at-home orders during the coronavirus pandemic as a setting to study whether political beliefs inhibit compliance with government orders. Using geolocation data sourced from smartphones, we find residents in Republican counties are less likely to completely stay at home after a state order has been implemented relative to those in Democratic counties. Debit card transaction data shows that Democrats are more likely to switch to remote spending after state orders ar ...[more]

PMID: 36540423

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Project description:BackgroundVaccine hesitancy is a global problem with diverse local policy responses, from voluntaristic to coercive. Between 2015 and 2017, California, Australia, France, and Italy increased the coerciveness of their childhood vaccine regimes. Despite this apparent convergence, there is little evidence of imposition, policy learning, or diffusion - the drivers that are usually discussed in scholarly literature on policy convergence. The fact that the four governments were oriented across the political spectrum, with quite different political and institutional systems, further indicates an empirical puzzle.MethodsTo better understand the drivers of enhanced vaccine mandates, a crucial issue during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) global rollout, this article engages with four case studies assembled from qualitative analysis of semi-structured in-country interviews and document analysis between November 2018 and November 2020. Key informants had specific expert knowledge or played a role in the introduction or implementation of the new policies. Interview transcripts were coded inductively and deductively, augmented with extensive analysis of legal, policy, academic and media documents.ResultsThe case analysis identifies two key and interacting elements in government decisions to tighten vaccine mandates: functional and political pressures. Policy-makers in Italy and France were primarily driven by functional challenges, with their vaccination governance systems under threat from reduced population compliance. California and Australia did not face systemic threats to the functioning of their systems, but activists utilised local opportunities to heighten political pressure on decision makers.ConclusionIn four recent cases of high-income jurisdictions making childhood vaccination policies more coercive, vaccine hesitancy alone could not explain why the policies arose in these jurisdictions and not others, while path dependency alone could not explain why some jurisdictions with mandates made them more coercive. Explanation lies in restrictive mandates being attractive for governments, whether they face systemic functional problems in vaccine governance, or political pressures generated by media and activists. Mandates can be framed as targeting whole populations or localised groups of refusers, and implemented without onerous costs or policy complexity.

Dataset Information

Political beliefs affect compliance with government mandates.

Publications

Political beliefs affect compliance with government mandates.

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