Social acceptance of policy instrument design during times of crisis

Abstract

Disasters create challenges for governments as they need to design effective and legitimate policy instruments to deal with the crisis. In this paper, we analyze social acceptance of regulations and financial investments in crisis governance, taking the example of the COVID-19 pandemic. By using data from two survey experiments in Switzerland, we show that respondents support rules that temporarily centralize decision-making power to the national level but object to regulations that would make contact tracing efforts mandatory. The data shows also that citizens support financial investments of tax money to prevent future crises. Those who are afraid of the health consequences of the crisis are especially favorable to stricter regulations and financial investment, whereas economic worries related to the crisis specifically and political ideology in general barely explain variance in support for crisis responses. In general, this research contributes to our understanding of how survey experiments can be used to analyze social acceptance of policy instrument design. © 2023 Policy Studies Organization.