Factors Influencing Countries’ Success Level in Curbing COVID-19: From A Socio-Ecological System (SES) Perspective

Little attention has been paid to interactions between institutional-human-environment dimensions, which are believed to impact the outcome of COVID-19 abatement. Thus, through the diagnostic SES framework analysis, this paper aims to investigate what and how the multifaceted social, physical, and governance factors affect the success level of 7 selected Asia-Pacific countries (namely South Korea, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam, Indonesia, and New Zealand) in combatting the COVID-19 pandemic. Drawing on secondary data from February 2020 to June 2020, the success or severity level of a country was measured by cumulative positive cases, average daily increase, and the mortality rate. A qualitative content analysis, covering code assignation, i.e., Present (P), Partially Present (PP), Absent (A) for each SES attribute, as well as rank ordering (from 1st to 7th) and score calculation (from 3 to 21) for the success level between the countries, was undertaken. Attributes (design principles) of SES factors, such as past experiences facing similar diseases, facilities mobility, lockdown measures, penalty, and standard of procedures in public spaces are deemed significant in determining the abatement outcome or severity of a country. The findings show that Vietnam (1st) and New Zealand (2nd) adopting most of the design principles of governance (with the scores of 15 and above) had successfully eliminated the virus, while Indonesia (7th) and Japan (6th) were deemed least successful (scoring between 3-9), likely due to the low presence frequency of design principles. Not only does the study validate SES framework adaptability in a health-related (non-commons) setting, where some design principles used in resource/commons governance are also relevant in explaining the COVID-19 outcome, the critical attributes of institutional-social-ecological factors are highlighted, ultimately helping policymakers devise more strategic measures to address the crisis