 Fear itself. Is fear a determinant of the efficacy oflockdowns?Vincenzo Alfano and Salvatore Ercolano Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, 2023, vol. 88, issue C Abstract: Among non-pharmaceutical measures for fighting the COVID-19 pandemic, one of the most important is the implementation of lockdowns. The cost and effectiveness of this policy remains a much-debated topic in economics. In this study we investigate whether a ‘fear effect’ is at work in influencing the effectiveness of lockdowns. According to previous contributions on the topic, fear can increase protective habits, and for this reason we may imagine that a high number of COVID-19-caused deaths creates fear among the population, which may make people more likely to follow government prescriptions and observe lockdowns strictly. By means of a qualitative-quantitative analysis, we find that among the 46 countries that reported coronavirus-caused deaths before the implementation of a lockdown, the top quartile for per capita deaths has better results in terms of reducing new COVID-19 cases after a lockdown, compared to the worst quartile. This suggests that the number of reported deaths, as well as its communication to the population, are important determinants of the effectiveness of a lockdown. Keywords: COVID-19; Coronavirus; Number of deaths; Public health compliance; Lockdown determinants; Spread of awareness (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:soceps:v:88:y:2023:i:c:s0038012123001568 DOI: 10.1016/j.seps.2023.101644 Access Statistics for this article Socio-Economic Planning Sciences is currently edited by Barnett R. Parker More articles in Socio-Economic Planning Sciences from Elsevier |
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