Civic Capital and Social Distancing during the Covid-19 Pandemic

John M. Barrios, Efraim Benmelech, Yael V. Hochberg, Paola Sapienza, Luigi Zingales

NBER Working Paper No. 27320
Issued in June 2020
NBER Program(s):Corporate Finance, Political Economy

The success of non-pharmaceutical interventions to contain pandemics often depends greatly upon voluntary compliance with government guidelines. What explains variation in voluntary compliance? Using mobile phone and survey data, we show that during the early phases of COVID-19, voluntary social distancing was higher when individuals exhibit a higher sense of civic duty. This is true for U.S. individuals, U.S. counties, and European regions. We also show that after U.S. states began re-opening, social distancing remained more prevalent in high civic capital counties. Our evidence points to the importance of civic capital in designing public policy responses to pandemics.

Acknowledgments

Machine-readable bibliographic record - MARC, RIS, BibTeX

Document Object Identifier (DOI): 10.3386/w27320

Published: John M. Barrios & Efraim Benmelech & Yael V. Hochberg & Paola Sapienza & Luigi Zingales, 2021. "Civic capital and social distancing during the Covid-19 pandemic☆," Journal of Public Economics, vol 193.