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Unmasking Partisanship: How Polarization Influences Public Responses to Collective Risk
From the Abstract: "Political polarization and competing narratives can undermine public policy implementation. Partisanship may play a particularly important role in shaping heterogeneous responses to collective risk during periods of crisis when political agents manipulate signals received by the public (i.e., alternative facts). We study these dynamics in the United States, focusing on how partisanship has influenced the use of face masks to stem the spread of COVID-19 [coronavirus disease 2019]. Using a wealth of micro-level data, machine learning approaches, and a novel quasi-experimental design, we document four facts: (1) mask use is robustly correlated with partisanship; (2) the impact of partisanship on mask use is not offset by local policy interventions; (3) partisanship is the single most important predictor of local mask use, not COVID severity or local policies; (4) Trump's unexpected mask use at Walter Reed on July 11, 2020 significantly increased social media engagement with and positive sentiment towards mask-related topics. These results unmask how partisanship undermines effective public responses to collective risk and how messaging by political agents can increase public engagement with mask use."
Becker Friedman Institute for Research in Economics
Milosh, Maria; Painter, Marcus; Van Dijcke, David . . .
2020-11-09
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Poverty and Economic Dislocation Reduce Compliance with COVID-19 Shelter-In-Place Protocols
From the Abstract: "Shelter-in-place ordinances were the first wide-spread policy measures aimed to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 [coronavirus disease 2019]. Compliance with shelter-in-place directives is individually costly and requires behavioral changes across diverse sub-populations. Leveraging county-day measures on population movement derived from cellphone location data and the staggered introduction of local mandates, we find that economic factors have played an important role in determining the level of compliance with local shelter-in-place ordinances in the US. Specifically, residents of low income areas complied with shelter-in-place ordinances less than their counterparts in areas with stronger economic endowments, even after accounting for potential confounding factors including partisanship, population density, exposure to recent trade disputes, unemployment, and other factors. Novel results on the local impact of the 2020 CARES [Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security] Act suggest stimulus transfers that addressed economic dislocation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic significantly increased social distancing."
Becker Friedman Institute for Research in Economics
Wright, Austin (Austin L.); Sonin, Konstantin; Driscoll, Jesse, 1978- . . .
2020-09-04
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Science Skepticism Reduced Compliance with COVID-19 Shelter-In-Place Policies in the United States
From the Abstract: "Physical distancing reduces transmission risks and slows the spread of COVID-19 [coronavirus disease 2019]. Yet compliance with shelter-in-place policies issued by local and regional governments in the United States was uneven and may have been influenced by science skepticism and attitudes towards topics of scientific consensus. Using county-day measures of physical distancing derived from cellphone location data, we demonstrate that the proportion of people who stayed at home after shelter-in-place policies went into effect in March and April 2020 in the United States was significantly lower in counties with a high concentration of science skeptics. These results are robust to controlling for other potential drivers of differential physical distancing, such as political partisanship, income, education and COVID [coronavirus disease] severity. Our findings suggest public health interventions that take local attitudes toward science into account in their messaging may be more effective."
Becker Friedman Institute for Research in Economics
Wright, Austin (Austin L.); Brzezinski, Adam; Kecht, Valentin . . .
2021-09
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