Dear all, (apologies for x-posting) We would like to invite to our webinar on new experimental survey research on political attitudes toward the COVID-19 pandemic, which will take place on Friday, March 5 between 13:00 and 14:30 (CET) on Zoom. We present the results of original survey experiments we conducted in Switzerland, the Netherlands, Denmark, and Germany in 2020 and 2021 to measure voter attitudes toward inter alia the distribution of COVID-19 vaccines, the allocation of ICU beds, and travel restrictions. Presenters: - Flavia Fossati, University of Lausanne & J. Philipp Trein, University of Geneva (CH) - Mark Helbling, University of Mannheim (DE) - Merlin Schaeffer & Mikkel Haderup Larsen, University of Copenhagen (DK) - Mia Gandenberger, University of Lausanne (CH) - Tim Reeskens, Tilburg University (NL) You can sign up via the following link: https://forms.gle/WsZq7YjTe3ScTtxK9 A detailed program with abstracts for each presentation is provided below. Please contact carlo.knotz@uis.no<mailto:carlo.knotz@uis.no> for any additional questions or requests. Best regards, Carlo, Flavia, Mark, Merlin, Mikkel, Mia, and Tim ———— Program ———— 1) Does every life count the same? Evidence from a Triage Experiment Marc Helbling (University of Mannheim), Rahsaan Maxwell (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill), Simon Munzert (Hertie School), Richard Traunmüller (University of Mannheim) This paper elicits citizen preferences in the moral dilemma of triage decisions. The experiment is framed in the context of the looming consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic on resource allocation in German hospitals. We aim to identify key heuristics applied in the population to make these ethically difficult choices and how they vary across subpopulations. We investigate to what extent people do not discriminate and base their choices on the patients’ chances of survival, to what extent they base their decisions on utilitarian considerations and to what extent they give preference to patients that belong to their in-group. The analyses focus among others on discrimination against immigrants. The analyses are based on 23 waves of an online rolling cross-sectional survey with around 17’000 respondents in Germany between April 2020 and March 2021. More detailed analyses explore how preference structures vary over time and space conditional on regional numbers of corona cases. 2) Who Should Get Vaccinated First? A Conjoint Experiment on Welfare Chauvinism Against Universal Preventive Healthcare During the COVID-19 Pandemic Merlin Schaeffer & Mikkel Haderup Larsen (University of Copenhagen) Only a universal vaccination program, which immunizes the population irrespective of origin and ethnicity – similar to the spread of the Coronavirus itself – will effectively fight the public health threat posed by COVID-19. This qualifies the COVID-19 vaccination program as an interesting case to test for welfare chauvinism. On that premise, we conducted a pre-registered paired vignette experiment during the first week of the Danish vaccination program, trying to find out whether recent immigrants and Muslim minorities are regarded as less deserving of critical access to preventive healthcare amid a pandemic. Our results show that Muslims and immigrants are indeed systematically seen as less deserving of a vaccination. Contra our pre-registered hypotheses, we find only weak evidence that immigrants or Muslims are penalized more harshly for not having followed the guidelines on face mask wearing and social distancing, or for having diabetes because of an unhealthy lifestyle. Compared with previous research, we exploit a timely and significant event to study welfare chauvinism, disentangle minority status from stereotypes about their anti-social behavior and irresponsible lifestyles, and use a paired vignette design, which has been shown to produce more valid results than standard survey experiments. 3) Protection, but no Control: Liberal Democracy and the Politicization of Crisis Response Policies Flavia Fossati (University of Lausanne) & J. Philipp Trein (University of Geneva) Researchers agree that the COVID-19 pandemic poses a complex policy challenge for decisionmakers and that governments should quickly augment their response capacity. In liberal democracies, it is important that such increases in state capacities have some degree of popular support, in order to be effective. Therefore, it is important to understand how the public supports different policy options and why some individuals are more favourable to anti-crisis policies than others. In this paper, we analyse the politicization of four dimensions of crisis response capacities against a pandemic based on a two-wave survey experiment in Switzerland. Our findings show that respondents support investment in materials to prevent future crises as well as quotas for health care workers. The results show also support for a leadership role by the federal government instead of lower levels of government, but indicated limited support for mandatory contact tracing efforts. In addition, those who are afraid of the health consequences of the crisis tend to support more state response capacity. Contrariwise, political ideology does not seem to explain support for crisis response. Finally, the support for a federal solution increased during the second wave of a pandemic, whereas approval of contact tracing declined. 4) Conditional Solidarity - Attitudes towards support for others during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic Mia Gandenberger (University of Lausanne), Carlo Knotz (University of Stavanger), Flavia Fossati & Giuliano Bonoli (University of Lausanne) The COVID-19 pandemic presents a unique opportunity to study how humans allocate scarce resources in times of hardship. We investigate whether people display selfish or altruistic behaviour and whether their decision making follows the same logic of reciprocal solidarity during this pandemic as deservingness perception research in non-crisis times would suggest. We test these hypotheses for the three central types of policies governments have adopted in response to the COVID-19 crisis: the (potential) rationing of ICU care, the provision of government aid to the self-employed and small businesses, and restrictions on cross-border movements. Three original conjoint survey experiments administered to an incentivised online panel in Switzerland in late April and early May 2020 show that people indeed base their judgement of who deserves to be included in solidaristic arrangements on an underlying logic of reciprocity and identity, as hypothesised by the literature on deservingness perceptions. 5) The Perceived Deservingness of COVID-19 Healthcare: Evidence from Two Conjoint Experiments among Dutch Respondents Tim Reeskens, Femke Roosma & Evelien Wanders (Tilburg University) Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, governments, supported by health experts and ethicists, released guidelines about which groups should receive priority access to intensive care treatment and vaccines in case resources are limited. To achieve legitimacy, public legitimacy is important, as deservingness theory informs us that not all groups are equally perceived as deserving of assistance. Relying on a probability-based sample representative of the Dutch population (N = 1,601), participants were offered two choice-based conjoint experiments that measured what deservingness criteria matter most in respectively priority access to intensive care (in case of an equal chance of survival), and priority access to a COVID-19 vaccine. The results foremost show that noncompliance with government measures aimed at preventing the spread of the coronavirus impedes perceived deservingness. By contrast, being employed in the ‘crucial’ sectors (i.e. health care and to a lesser extent education), leads to a higher perceived priority. Our results indicate that control and reciprocity are important criteria to determine people’s deservingness of preventive and curative COVID-19 health care. ---------------- Carlo Knotz Førsteamanuensis / Assoc. Professor in Political Science University of Stavanger cknotz.github.io<http://cknotz.github.io/>