The political cost of lockdown´s enforcement

Andrea Fazio (), Tommaso Reggiani () and Fabio Sabatini

MUNI ECON Working Papers from Masaryk University

Abstract: We study how the political cost of enforcing a lockdown in response to the COVID-19 outbreak relates to citizens’ propensity for altruistic punishment in Italy, the early epicenter of the pandemic. Approval for the government’s management of the crisis decreases with the amount of the penalties that individuals would like to see enforced for lockdown violations. People supporting stronger punishment are more likely to consider the government’s reaction to the pandemic as insufficient. However, after the establishment of tougher sanctions for risky behaviors, we observe a sudden flip in support for government. Higher amounts of the desired fines become associated with a higher probability of considering the government’s policy response as too extreme, lower trust in government, and lower confidence in the truthfulness of the officially provided information. Lockdowns entail a political cost that helps explain why democracies may adopt epidemiologically suboptimal policies.

Keywords: COVID-19; Lockdown; Law enforcement; Altruistic punishment; In-cumbent support; Trust in institutions; Italy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D12 D83 I12 K40 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 31 pages
Date: 2021-02, Revised 2023-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-law and nep-soc
Note: License: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Published in Health Policy, 2022, vol. 126, no. 9, pp. 872-878

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Related works:
Working Paper: The Political Cost of Lockdown's Enforcement (2021)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:mub:wpaper:2021-04

DOI: 10.5817/WP_MUNI_ECON_2021-04

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