Are Happier People More Compliant? Global Evidence From Three Large-Scale Surveys During Covid-19 Lockdowns

Christian Krekel, Sarah Swanke, Jan-Emmanuel De Neve and Daisy Fancourt (d.fancourt@ucl.ac.uk)
Additional contact information
Sarah Swanke: London School of Economics
Daisy Fancourt: University College London

No 13690, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Around the world, governments have been asking their citizens to practice physical distancing and stay at home to contain the spread of Covid-19. Are happier people more willing to comply with these measures? Using three independent surveys covering over 119,000 adult respondents across 35 countries, including longitudinal data from the UK, we test competing psychological theories, and find that past and present happiness predicts compliance during lockdown. The relationship is stronger for those with higher levels of happiness. A negative mood, or loss in happiness, predicts lower compliance. We explore risk-avoidance and pro-social motivations for compliance, and find that these are not uniform but dependent on personal characteristics and context: people who are older or have certain medical preconditions seem to be predominantly motivated by risk-avoidance, whereas motivations of people who are less at risk of Covid-19 seem more mixed. Our findings have implications for policy design, targeting, and communication.

Keywords: COVID-19; lockdown compliance; happiness; mood maintenance; risk-avoidance; pro-sociality (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D91 I12 I31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 69 pages
Date: 2020-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dem, nep-hap and nep-hea
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp13690.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Are happier people more compliant? Global evidence from three large-scale surveys during Covid-19 lockdowns (2020)
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:iza:izadps:dp13690

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany
library@iza.org

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte (hinte@iza.org).