Rethinking Lockdown Policies in the Pre-Vaccine Era of COVID-19: A Configurational Perspective

Ziang Zhang, Chao Liu, Robin Nunkoo, Vivek A. Sunnassee and Xiaoyan Chen
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Ziang Zhang: School of Geography, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing 210023, China
Chao Liu: Faculty of Hospitality & Tourism Management, Macau University of Science and Technology, Taipa, Macau 999078, China
Robin Nunkoo: Department of Management, University of Mauritius, Reduit MU 80837, Mauritius
Vivek A. Sunnassee: Westminster Business School, University of Westminster, 35 Marylebone Road, London NW1 5LS, UK
Xiaoyan Chen: School of Humanities, Jiangsu University of Technology, Changzhou 213001, China

IJERPH, 2022, vol. 19, issue 12, 1-18

Abstract: The significance of lockdown policies for controlling the COVID-19 pandemic is widely recognized. However, most studies have focused on individual lockdown measures. The effectiveness of lockdown policy combinations has not been examined from a configurational perspective. This research applies fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to examine different lockdown policy combinations associated with high-epidemic situations in 84 countries. A high-epidemic situation can occur through three different “weak-confined” patterns of lockdown policy combinations. The findings demonstrate that a combination of lockdown policies is more successful than any single lockdown policy, whereas the absence of several key measures in policy combinations can lead to a high-epidemic situation. The importance of international travel controls can become obscured when they are the only measures adopted, and a high-epidemic situation can still arise where restrictions are placed on international travel but not on public transport or when workplaces are closed but schools remain open.

Keywords: lockdown policy; high epidemic; pandemic; COVID-19; fsQCA; comparative policy analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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