IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bpd/articl/v3y2020i1jbpa.31.174.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Government reputational effects of COVID-19 public health actions: A job opportunity evaluation conjoint experiment

Author

Listed:
  • Michael J. Nelson

    (Pennsylvania State University)

  • Christopher Witko

    (Pennsylvania State University)

Abstract

The tradeoff between short-term economic and public health has been very salient in debates surrounding U.S. government responses to COVID-19. But highly salient choices by very visible executive branch leaders, like state COVID-19 public health actions, have implications beyond current economic performance. We argue that by shaping perceptions of state governments, or state “reputations†, these responses may affect how individuals evaluate economic opportunities in different states. To examine this possibility, we conducted a conjoint experiment presenting subjects with different pairs of job opportunities varying many attributes of the location, job and the state governor’s response to COVID-19. We find that individuals evaluate job opportunities more favorably when a state governor has more aggressively mandated social distancing measures. These effects are largest for individuals concerned about COVID-19 and Democrats, but even Republicans prefer jobs in states where the governor took some meaningful action compared to making a purely symbolic statement. Our findings indicate that governors and their advisors should consider how their COVID-19 responses shape state reputations, which ultimately have consequences for economic performance beyond the immediate crisis.

Suggested Citation

  • Michael J. Nelson & Christopher Witko, 2020. "Government reputational effects of COVID-19 public health actions: A job opportunity evaluation conjoint experiment," Journal of Behavioral Public Administration, Center for Experimental and Behavioral Public Administration, vol. 3(1).
    • Handle: RePEc:bpd:articl:v:3:y:2020:i:1:jbpa.31.174
    DOI: 10.30636/jbpa.31.174
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journal-bpa.org/index.php/jbpa/article/download/174/75
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.30636/jbpa.31.174?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Hainmueller, Jens & Hopkins, Daniel J. & Yamamoto, Teppei, 2014. "Causal Inference in Conjoint Analysis: Understanding Multidimensional Choices via Stated Preference Experiments," Political Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 22(1), pages 1-30, January.
    2. Peter D. Lunn & Cameron A. Belton & Ciarán Lavin & Féidhlim P. McGowan & Shane Timmons & Deirdre A. Robertson, 2020. "Using behavioral science to help fight the Coronavirus," Journal of Behavioral Public Administration, Center for Experimental and Behavioral Public Administration, vol. 3(1).
    3. Kuhn, Kristine M. & Yockey, Mark D., 2003. "Variable pay as a risky choice: Determinants of the relative attractiveness of incentive plans," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 90(2), pages 323-341, March.
    4. Kim-Lee Tuxhorn & John W. D'Attoma & Sven Steinmo, 2019. "Trust in institutions: Narrowing the ideological gap over the federal budget," Journal of Behavioral Public Administration, Center for Experimental and Behavioral Public Administration, vol. 2(1).
    5. Leeper, Thomas J. & Hobolt, Sara & Tilley, James, 2020. "Measuring subgroup preferences in conjoint experiments," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 100944, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    6. Carisa Bergner & Bruce A. Desmarais & John Hird, 2019. "Speaking truth in power: Scientific evidence as motivation for policy activism," Journal of Behavioral Public Administration, Center for Experimental and Behavioral Public Administration, vol. 2(1).
    7. Berinsky, Adam J. & Huber, Gregory A. & Lenz, Gabriel S., 2012. "Evaluating Online Labor Markets for Experimental Research: Amazon.com's Mechanical Turk," Political Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 20(3), pages 351-368, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Raman, Shyam & Kriner, Douglas & Ziebarth, Nicolas & Simon, Kosali & Kreps, Sarah, 2022. "COVID-19 booster uptake among US adults: Assessing the impact of vaccine attributes, incentives, and context in a choice-based experiment," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 310(C).
    2. Henrik Serup Christensen & Lauri Rapeli, 2021. "Immediate rewards or delayed gratification? A conjoint survey experiment of the public’s policy preferences," Policy Sciences, Springer;Society of Policy Sciences, vol. 54(1), pages 63-94, March.
    3. Janne Tukiainen & Sebastian Blesse & Albrecht Bohne & Leonardo M. Giuffrida & Jan Jäässkeläinen & Ari Luukinen & Antti Sieppi, 2021. "What Are the Priorities of Bureaucrats? Evidence from Conjoint Experiments with Procurement Officials," EconPol Working Paper 63, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich.
    4. Michael J. Frith, 2021. "Analysing conjoint experiments in Stata: the conjoint command," London Stata Conference 2021 14, Stata Users Group.
    5. Chu, Haoran & Liu, Sixiao, 2021. "Light at the end of the tunnel: Influence of vaccine availability and vaccination intention on people’s consideration of the COVID-19 vaccine," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 286(C).
    6. Rudolph, Lukas & Freitag, Markus & Thurner, Paul, 2021. "The Comparative Legitimacy of Arms Exports - A Conjoint Experiment in Germany and France," SocArXiv r73pv, Center for Open Science.
    7. Lim, Sijeong & Dolsak, Nives & Prakash, Aseem & Tanaka, Seiki, 2022. "Distributional concerns and public opinion: EV subsidies in the U.S. and Japan," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 164(C).
    8. Aaron R Kaufman, 2020. "Implementing novel, flexible, and powerful survey designs in R Shiny," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(4), pages 1-15, April.
    9. KASUYA Yuko & MIWA Hirofumi & ONO Yoshikuni, 2022. "Why are There More Women in the Upper House?," Discussion papers 22094, Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI).
    10. IGARASHI Akira & MIWA Hirofumi & ONO Yoshikuni, 2022. "How Do Racial Cues Affect Attitudes toward Immigrants in a Racially Homogeneous Country? Evidence from a survey experiment in Japan," Discussion papers 22091, Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI).
    11. Henrik S Christensen & Marco S La Rosa & Kimmo Grönlund, 2020. "How candidate characteristics affect favorability in European Parliament elections: Evidence from a conjoint experiment in Finland," European Union Politics, , vol. 21(3), pages 519-540, September.
    12. Lala Muradova & Ross James Gildea, 2021. "Oil wealth and US public support for war," Conflict Management and Peace Science, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 38(1), pages 3-19, January.
    13. Liam F. Beiser-McGrath & Thomas Bernauer & Jaehyun Song & Azusa Uji, 2021. "Understanding public support for domestic contributions to global collective goods," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 166(3), pages 1-20, June.
    14. Knotz, Carlo Michael & Gandenberger, Mia Katharina & Fossati, Flavia & Bonoli, Giuliano, 2021. "Public attitudes toward pandemic triage: Evidence from conjoint survey experiments in Switzerland," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 285(C).
    15. Dustin Tingley, 2014. "Survey Research in International Political Economy: Motivations, Designs, Methods," International Interactions, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 40(3), pages 443-451, May.
    16. Clifford, Scott & Rainey, Carlisle, 2023. "Estimators for Topic-Sampling Designs," SocArXiv 7ady6, Center for Open Science.
    17. Barceló, Joan & Sheen, Greg Chih-Hsin & Tung, Hans H. & Wu, Wen-Chin, 2022. "Vaccine nationalism among the public: A cross-country experimental evidence of own-country bias towards COVID-19 vaccination," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 310(C).
    18. Tellez,Juan Fernando & Balcells,Laia, 2022. "Social Cohesion, Economic Security, and Forced Displacement in the Long-Run : Evidencefrom Rural Colombia," Policy Research Working Paper Series 10019, The World Bank.
    19. Christensen, Henrik Serup, 2020. "How design features affect evaluations of participatory platforms," SocArXiv 4ubwh, Center for Open Science.
    20. Blaine G. Robbins, 2017. "Status, identity, and ability in the formation of trust," Rationality and Society, , vol. 29(4), pages 408-448, November.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Bureaucratic reputation; COVID-19; Conjoint experiment; Economic performance; Employment;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D91 - Microeconomics - - Micro-Based Behavioral Economics - - - Role and Effects of Psychological, Emotional, Social, and Cognitive Factors on Decision Making
    • I18 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Government Policy; Regulation; Public Health
    • Z00 - Other Special Topics - - General - - - General
    • D90 - Microeconomics - - Micro-Based Behavioral Economics - - - General

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bpd:articl:v:3:y:2020:i:1:jbpa.31.174. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sebastian Jilke (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://journal-bpa.org .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.