Citation

Bird MD, Arispe S, Munoz P, Freier LF. J. Econ. Behav. Organ. 2022; ePub(ePub): ePub.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2022, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.jebo.2022.12.010

PMID

36570103

PMCID

PMC9760614

Abstract

Political trust is an important predictor of compliance with government policies, especially in the face of natural disasters or public health emergencies. During the COVID-19 pandemic, for example, multiple studies related political trust to increased compliance with mobility restrictions. Yet these findings come mostly from high-income countries where political trust and wealth correlate positively, thus hindering causal inference. In Latin America, both variables correlate negatively, allowing for better testing of competing explanations. Using a di↵erencein- di↵erences design, we find that in Latin America wealth and, counterintuitively, low political trust predict increased compliance. To understand mechanisms, we decompose political trust and wealth into underlying predictors (social protection, corruption, and education) and reinsert them into the model. While education, as a wealth proxy, predicts decreased mobility across all periods, social protection, which was the strongest predictor of political trust, relates significantly to increased mobility, but only at the beginning of the lockdown prior to distribution of emergency support. This suggests the existence of a public health moral hazard early in the pandemic, whereby citizens who benefited previously from government benefits may have been more risk tolerant in the face of the COVID-19 threat. We interpret these findings within the context of the region's recent "inclusionary turn." Future studies should explore more the distinct relationships between political trust, risk perception, and compliance, especially in lowand middle-countries, and their implications for confronting national emergencies.

Language: en

Keywords

COVID-19; Trust; compliance; social protection