The present multinational study provides an individual and country-level perspective on the role of governmental trust as a moderator for motivations to support COVID-19 containment behaviors. Ever since its start in 2020, the pandemic has been a major reason for worry and concern among people around the globe, so governments and local officials strove to efficiently implement varying strategies to combat the spread of the virus. So far, only few studies have examined how the motives of people to comply with public health guidelines may differ in accordance with various boundary conditions (e.g., Ingoglia et al., 2022). The present study tried to cross-culturally shed light on the ways in which individuals (or societies) with low versus high levels of trust in the government respond to the COVID-19 pandemic, and how their motivations for supporting COVID-19 containment behaviors may differ accordingly.
First, we hypothesized that higher governmental trust will strengthen the positive association between empathic concern and the support of COVID-19 containment behaviors, both at the individual and the country level. We found evidence at the individual level (but not the country-level) for the hypothesized association. Namely, while high trust in the government on the individual-level was in fact strengthening the association between prosocial motives and the support of COVID-19 containment behaviors, trust in the government at the country-level did not moderate this association. Country-level governmental trust was also not directly associated with the support of COVID-19 containment behaviors, supporting our claim that higher governmental trust may not inevitably promote stronger commitment to large-scale cooperative activities.
However, the question remains as to why country-level trust in the government did not exhibit a moderating effect (on the relationship between the empathic concerns and the support of COVID-19 containment behaviors of respondents) across countries. One possible explanation is that empathy is a deeply rooted individual characteristic which remains (more or less) resistant to different socio-political contexts, hence it appears to be less variable when considered in conjunction with country-level aspects. Highly empathetic people usually show a higher sense of community and civic engagement, so they are more likely to take on the responsibility for the community’s well-being (Ingoglia et al., 2022) and could also be more prone to respond sensitively and favorably to issues of protecting citizens’ health (regardless of whether they find themselves in a context where trust in the government is typically low or high). Still, it should be highlighted that individuals’ own and personal levels of confidence in their government indeed altered the strength of the association between empathic concern and support for COVID-19 containment behaviors, highlighting that higher trust on individual level may catalyze the beneficial effects of empathy for promoting large-scale cooperative action.
Furthermore, we also postulated that low governmental trust would strengthen the association between fear from COVID-19 disease and support for COVID-19 containment behaviors, both at the individual and country level. In this case, our evidence provided support for the hypothesis at both levels of analysis. Our results show that fear of COVID-19 was related to preventive behaviors, especially when the trust in government was low. According to a number of authors (e.g., Germani et al., 2020; Horesh & Brown, 2020; Lee, 2020), in times of epidemic outbreak, people, especially those at risk of infection, are extremely vulnerable, emotionally fragile, and feel ambivalent emotions. They feel fear and panic, but also skepticism and disregard. Under these circumstances, individuals have difficulty processing information and may think of and behave for themselves as individuals rather than as connected to others. The same may also apply when people perceive their governments as not trustworthy, or when they are living in a surrounding that is characterized by low levels of trust in the government. Under such conditions, individuals may feel a stronger need to curb their fear through personal protective behaviors; and thus their self-protection motives (i.e., fear of disease) may play a stronger role for their support of COVID-19 containment behaviors. This is also in line with previous research showing that cooperation also relies on selfish (instead of altruistic) reasons, especially when deliberate cognitive processes are involved in the decision of whether to cooperate or not (Bear, & Rand, 2016; see also Rand et al., 2014). Results from the present study replicate previous work in this field (Capraro & Barcelo, 2020; Christner et al., 2022; Harper et al., 2021; Jordan et al., 2021; Kachanoff et al., 2021; Lee et al., 2020; Legate et al., 2022; Lunn et al., 2020; Rahman et al., 2021; Stuart et al., 2021; Wang et al., 2021) and show that both self- and other-oriented motives play a role for intentions to engage in COVID-19 containment behaviors. Additionally, our research demonstrated that fear-driven cooperation seems most relevant for individuals with low levels of governmental trust, or for those living in low-trust contexts.
Implications
Our findings have relevant practical implications. The present findings underscore that adherence to guidelines aimed at preventing the COVID-19 pandemic spread depends on the interplay between personal individual-level resources (like fear and empathy), and contextual resources (like governmental trust). Mirroring results from extant research (e.g., Campos-Mercade et al., 2020; Jordan et al., 2021), the present findings highlight the strong and robust role of other-oriented concerns for mobilizing large-scale cooperation, that was found to be unaffected by country-level trust. However, the present research further underlies that self-centered motives may also play a role for large-scale cooperative endeavors. Results show that fear of disease was associated with individuals’ support for COVID-19 containment measures, and that this was especially pronounced under volatile conditions; that is when individuals’ hardly trusted their governments or when the general level of governmental trust within a community was low. Yet, while fear of infection may be associated with stronger compliance to COVID-19 health measures (see also, Harper et al., 2021; Do The Khoa et al., 2021), there is also growing evidence about the negative mental health consequences of enhanced fear of infection (e.g., Fitzpatrick et al., 2020; Yao et al., 2022), suggesting that promoting large-scale cooperation via fear would represent a costly and harmful strategy that is to be avoided. Promoting empathy, on the contrary, may work as a promising and no-risk strategy to enhance the efficacy of policy recommendations in collective crisis situations across various conditions. However, to benefit from empathy to the utmost, governments should take action in increasing individuals’ perceptions of trust in the government.
Limitations and Future Research
The present research allowed us to examine the links between trust and acceptance of imposed restrictions during times of COVID-19, albeit in correlational rather than causal manner. Though correlational research is central for scientific progress (see Witte & Zenker, 2017), it is but an intermediate step in the process. Correlational research such as the one presented in this study should ideally be supported by ensuing causal confirmations, or at least with corroborated results from independent samples (also see many labs project; Klein et al., 2018). This of course is not a feasible solution in the present situation, as, hopefully, the COVID-19 pandemic is nearing its end. It is however an observation that should make us interpret the present findings with due caution.
The present data are sufficiently inclusive in terms of cultures of the world, and contains answers from a sufficiently large sample for conducting complex analyses such as hierarchical regression. Nonetheless, there is concern, as is the case usually in survey research (e.g., Wolf et al., 2021), that the sampled population might not be representative for the phenomenon and therefore for how our results can be generalized to the experiences of the general population in times of a pandemic. This is especially concerning considering that certain populations that were at risk such as older people and people with a migration background could not be adequately represented. The results therefore might be biased toward the younger, local populations with internet access at the time of data collection.
Moreover, we are aware that the self-reported importance of performing COVID-19 containment behaviors which served as the dependent variable of the present research may not allow conclusions on how individuals would actually behave (e.g., Ajzen et al., 2004). For the present research, the choice of a self-report measure was driven by the multi-national nature of the study, and the limited resources available for data collection during the pandemic. Moreover, it should be noted that we deliberately chose to assess the importance given to the practice of COVID-19 containment measures instead of assessing self-reported behavior intentions or past behavior frequencies. That is, because behavior intentions may also be determined by other obligations or situational constraints. For instance, people working in hospitals would not report avoiding hospitals, even though they may consider it important to do so (for others).
Lastly, we note that the moderation effects, though significant, are small in magnitude. However, this is not in itself a concern due to the explorative nature of the study. It could become a concern if these results were taken at a face value without subsequent testing. Hence, even though the findings of the present research seem overall in line with the literature on rhe role played by trust in government, they may not necessarily apply to other global crises, or if independent data were to be collected. We do appreciate the benefits of conducting qualitative research at this stage in the pandemic (e.g., Pocock et al., 2021; Vindrola-Padros et al., 2020), and recommend using both experimental and qualitative research methods to further probe the links between trust and various motivations for supporting COVID-19 containment behaviors.