Compliance in the Public versus the Private Realm: Economic Preferences, Institutional Trust and COVID-19 Health Behaviors

To what extent do economic preferences and institutional trust predict compliance with physical distancing rules during the COVID-19 pandemic? We make a distinction between individual health behaviors in the public and the private domain (e.g., keeping a distance from strangers versus abstaining from private gatherings with friends) and examine whether the importance of risk, time, and social preferences as well as trust in science and the government differs across these two domains. Using structural equation modeling to analyze survey data from Germanys second wave of the pandemic (N=3,350), we reveal three major differences: First, reciprocity (especially positive reciprocity) seems essential for individual compliance in the public domain, but barely relevant in the private domain. Second, we find the opposite pattern for individuals’ degree of trust in the national government, which appears to matter predominantly for increasing compliance in the private domain. Third, social preferences are generally less important for compliance in the private domain, where individuals’ COVID-19-related threat perception is clearly the strongest predictor. From a policy perspective, our findings suggest that communication strategies aimed at spurring compliance may either need to be tailored to domain-specific circumstances or focus on those factors common across domains.