Download This PaperExperience of the COVID-19 Pandemic in Wuhan Leads to a Lasting Increase in Social Distancing
39 Pages Posted: 3 Jan 2023
Date Written: October 24, 2022
Abstract
On 11th Jan 2020, the first COVID-19 related death was confirmed in Wuhan, Hubei. The Chinese government responded to the outbreak with a lockdown that impacted most residents of Hubei province and lasted for almost three months. At the time, the lockdown was the strictest both within China and worldwide. Using an interactive web-based experiment conducted half a year after the lockdown with participants from 11 Chinese provinces, we investigate the behavioral effects of this ‘shock’ event experienced by the population of Hubei. We find that both one’s place of residence and the strictness of lockdown measures in their province are robust predictors of individual social distancing behavior. Further, we observe that informational messages are effective at increasing compliance with social distancing throughout China, whereas fines for noncompliance work better within Hubei province relative to the rest of the country. We also report that residents of Hubei increase their propensity to social distance when exposed to social environments characterized by the presence of a superspreader, while the effect is not present outside of the province. Our results appear to be specific to the context of COVID-19, and are not explained by general differences in risk attitudes and social preferences.
Note:
Funding Information: We acknowledge support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant no.71872098 for KR and grant no. 72192802 for KT), the Beijing Social Science Fund (KR grant no.21DTR051), the Guoqiang Institute of Tsinghua University, Cambridge Humanities Research Grant Scheme (EG), Economic and Social Research Council and Trinity College Cambridge (DB). This work is the sole responsibility of the authors, and does not necessarily represent the official views of any of the funding agencies.
Conflict of Interests: All authors declare they have no competing interests.
Ethical Approval: This research received ethical approval for the use of human subjects from
the Faculty of Economics Ethical Committee (University of Cambridge, ref.UCAM-FoE-20-02)
and the Department of Psychology Ethics Committee (Tsinghua University, ref.THU202019).
The experiment was performed in accordance with the relevant guidelines and regulations. Informed
consent was obtained from all subjects before participation.
Keywords: social distancing, COVID-19, Wuhan lockdown, online experiment, nudge, super-spreader
JEL Classification: C99, D85, D91, I12
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation