Citation

Tubadji A, Boy F, Webber DJ. Appl. Res. Qual. Life 2022; ePub(ePub): ePub.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2022, Holtzbrinck Springer Nature Publishing Group)

DOI

10.1007/s11482-022-10109-0

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

General public's mental health can be affected by the public policy response to a pandemic threat. Britain, Italy and Sweden have had very distinct approaches to the COVID-19 pandemic: early lock-down, delayed lock-down and no-lock-down. We develop a novel narrative economics of language Culture-Based Development approach, and using Google trend data for seed keywords, death and suicide, we reach two main conclusions: (i) while countries had a pre-existing culturally relative disposition towards death-related anxiety, the sensitivity to the public policy towards COVID-19 was also country specific; (ii) however, significant spillovers from one specific national lockdown public policy to another country's mental health are identified.

Language: en

Keywords

COVID-19; Cultural hysteresis; Cultural narrative; Culture based development; Health; Narrative economics; Public policy; Shocks