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Cultural values predict national COVID-19 death rates
[journal article]
Abstract National responses to a pandemic require populations to comply through personal behaviors that occur in a cultural context. Here we show that aggregated cultural values of nations, derived from World Values Survey data, have been at least as important as top-down government actions in predicting the... view more
National responses to a pandemic require populations to comply through personal behaviors that occur in a cultural context. Here we show that aggregated cultural values of nations, derived from World Values Survey data, have been at least as important as top-down government actions in predicting the impact of COVID-19. At the population level, the cultural factor of cosmopolitanism, together with obesity, predict higher numbers of deaths in the first two months of COVID-19 on the scale of nations. At the state level, the complementary variables of government efficiency and public trust in institutions predict lower death numbers. The difference in effect between individual beliefs and behaviors, versus state-level actions, suggests that open cosmopolitan societies may face greater challenges in limiting a future pandemic or other event requiring a coordinated national response among the population. More generally, mass cultural values should be considered in crisis preparations.... view less
Keywords
health policy; cultural factors; epidemic; behavior; mortality; cosmopolitanism; crisis management (psych.); regression analysis
Classification
Health Policy
Free Keywords
Computational social science; Cultural evolution; COVID-19; ZA4804: European Values Study Longitudinal Data File 1981-2008 (EVS 1981-2008); World Values Survey (WVS)
Document language
English
Publication Year
2021
Page/Pages
p. 1-11
Journal
SN Social Sciences, 1 (2021) 3
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/s43545-021-00080-2
ISSN
2662-9283
Status
Published Version; peer reviewed