The Politicized Pandemic: Ideological Polarization and the Behavioral Response to COVID-19

Gianluca Grimalda, Fabrice Murtin, David Pipke (), Louis Putterman and Matthias Sutter
Additional contact information
David Pipke: Kiel Institute for the World Economy

No 138, ECONtribute Discussion Papers Series from University of Bonn and University of Cologne, Germany

Abstract: We investigate the relationship between political attitudes and prosociality in a survey of a representative sample of the U.S. population during the first summer of the COVID-19 pandemic. We find that an experimental measure of prosociality correlates positively with adherence to protective behaviors. Liberal political ideology predicts higher levels of protective behavior than conservative ideology, independently of the differences in prosociality across the two groups. Differences between liberals and conservatives are up to 4.4 times smaller in their behavior than in judging the government’s crisis management. This result suggests that U.S. Americans are more polarized on ideological than behavioral grounds.

Keywords: Polarization; Ideology; Trust in politicians; COVID-19; Prosociality; Health behavior; Worries (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D01 D72 D91 H11 H12 I12 I18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 51 pages
Date: 2022-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp, nep-hea, nep-pol and nep-soc
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econtribute.de/RePEc/ajk/ajkdps/ECONtribute_138_2022.pdf First version, 2022 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The politicized pandemic: Ideological polarization and the behavioral response to COVID-19 (2023)
Working Paper: The Politicized Pandemic: Ideological Polarization and the Behavioral Response to COVID-19 (2022)
Working Paper: The politicized pandemic: Ideological polarization and the behavioral response to COVID-19 (2022)
Working Paper: The politicized pandemic: Ideological polarization and the behavioral response to COVID-19 (2022)
Working Paper: The politicized pandemic: Ideological polarization and the behavioral response to COVID-19 (2022)
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:ajk:ajkdps:138

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in ECONtribute Discussion Papers Series from University of Bonn and University of Cologne, Germany Niebuhrstrasse 5, 53113 Bonn, Germany.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ECONtribute Office ().