The cultural character of european countries and reactions to the COVID-19 crisis: Collectivism, attitudes regarding freedoms, political trust, and conspiracy beliefs

In the study, we present findings on Slovenia compared to other European countries. We explore how support for and compliance with preventive measures is related to the national cultural characteristics of Collectivism vs. Individualism, tightness and attitudes regarding freedom, aggregate measures of trust in government, and how common conspiracy beliefs are. The analysis of various data from different existing sources, merged on the country level, shows that countries which are low on following and supporting the preventive measures are grouped among those prevailingly collectivist in character. This contrasts with what has been shown in many studies on the global level. We show that the same collectivistic character also nurtures lower levels of political trust and lower levels of support for the limitations on freedom, together with stronger conspiracy theory beliefs, which is consistent with the explanation that a specific type of collectivism exists in certain regions of Europe.