COVID-19 Is Examining the EU and the Member States: The Role of Attitudes and Sociodemographic Factors on Citizens’ Support towards National Policies

Juan Carlos Martín and Concepción Román
Additional contact information
Juan Carlos Martín: Department of Applied Economic Analysis, Institute of Tourism and Economic Sustainable Development, University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, 35001 Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain
Concepción Román: Department of Applied Economic Analysis, Institute of Tourism and Economic Sustainable Development, University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, 35001 Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain

Social Sciences, 2021, vol. 10, issue 2, 1-27

Abstract: During March and April 2020, the European Union (EU) was the center of the COVID-19 pandemic. Many national governments imposed severe lockdown policies to mitigate the health crisis, but the citizens’ support to these policies was unknown. The aim of this paper was to analyze empirically how citizens in the EU have reacted towards the measures taken by the national governments. To this end, a microeconometric model (ordered probit) that explains the citizens’ satisfaction by a number of attitudes and sociodemographic factors was estimated using a wide database formed by 21,804 European citizens in 21 EU countries who responded a survey between 23 April and 1 May 2020. Our results revealed that Spaniards were the least satisfied citizens in comparison with Danes, Irelanders, Greeks, and Croats, who were the most satisfied nationals. The years of education and the social class also played a determinant role. We also found that the most important determinant was the political support to the government, and that those who were more worried by the economy and the protection of individual rights were usually more critical of the measures than those who were more worried by the health consequences.

Keywords: COVID-19 pandemic; ordered probit; microeconometric analysis; marginal effects; lockdown measures (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A B N P Y80 Z00 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/10/2/46/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/10/2/46/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jscscx:v:10:y:2021:i:2:p:46-:d:490565

Access Statistics for this article

Social Sciences is currently edited by Ms. Yvonne Chu

More articles in Social Sciences from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().