Mardi | 2021-12-07
Salle B.103 – 16h

What explains varying levels of compliance with public health measures? During the global COVID-19 pandemic, governments around the world have implemented various forms of containment measures or “non-pharmaceutical interventions” (NPIs). These include lockdowns, mask mandates, curfews, the closure of businesses, schools, or places of worship, and more. One factor in public health authorities’ and governments’ decision making about which measures to implement has been anticipated rates of compliance. Compliance, in turn, affects the extent to which these measures have an impact on rates of infection and deaths. We collected data by systematically observing public webcams in Turkish municipalities to directly measure behavioral compliance with COVID-19 restrictions. These data allow us to examine the impact of the tightening or loosening of restrictions, as well as temporal and geographical variation in compliance rates. We hypothesize that variation in compliance may be driven by levels of trust in the government. One possibility is that citizens affinity towards the ruling political party affects trust in government and, thereby, compliance. We test this hypothesis using our data.