To Obey or not to Obey? The Role of Trust in Non-pharmaceutical Interventions

Insights into crisis management and trust in public health consequences can be obtained by studying non-pharmaceutical interventions, which have been an important part of the anti-COVID-19 strategy. These restrictions are very difficult to enforce (due to the scale of the policies), making them an interesting setting in which to test how publics with different levels of trust comply with government prescriptions. Using European Social Survey data regarding the spread of COVID-19, as well as the Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker, this study aims to test the impact of different levels of trust in different institutions on the compliance with NPIs in a sample of European countries. The results show that both interpersonal trust and trust in institutions play a role. The former has a positive effect, while the effect of the latter depends on the type of institution: trust in government and parliament does not affect citizens’ behavior, whereas trust in political parties, justice, the police and the healthcare system does have an impact on public behavior.