Lives and Livelihoods: Understanding Public Preferences and Trade-offs for Government Responses During a Pandemic

Background

The Covid-19 pandemic has forced governments worldwide to implement lockdown measures. These policies have differed considerably across different countries in terms of scope, length, and in the severity of restrictions.

While necessary to save lives, lockdown measures had a profound negative impact on many people’s lives and livelihoods. Many employees saw their hours reduced, were furloughed, or lost their jobs entirely. Patients had limited access to non-pandemic related health services, and parents were unable to make use of childcare services.

Objectives

In this project, which is coordinated by the Health Economics Research Unit in Aberdeen, we focus on citizen preferences with respect to lockdown policies. In particular, we are evaluating what restrictions people are willing to endure in order to save lives.

We evaluate how these preferences differ across age, sex, and income levels. In addition, we employ an innovative methodology (a combination of the Moral Foundations Questionnaire-20 with Discrete Choice Experiment methodology) to evaluate the effect of people’s moral attitudes on their lockdown policy preferences. We also measure people’s willingness to comply with different restrictions.

Our research aims at understanding which lockdown measures have the greatest impact on different people and which restrictions are most likely to be followed. This knowledge can help political decision makers implement lockdown policies in a way that minimizes negative impact and increases compliance. Our investigation of the effect of moral attitudes on lockdown preferences can lead to more effective ways to promote trust in pandemic prevention strategies.