Long Term Effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Social Concerns.

Esther Blanco,Tarek Jaber-Lopez,Natalie Struwe,Felix Holzmeister,Alexandra Baier

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2021.743054

Abstract

While some local, temporary past crises have boosted overall charitable donations, there have been concerns about potential substitution effects that the Covid-19 pandemic might have on other social objectives, such as tackling climate change and reducing inequality. We present results from a donation experiment (n = 1, 762), with data collected between April 2020 and January 2021. We combine data from (i) an online donation experiment, (ii) an extended questionnaire including perceptions, actions, and motives on the Covid-19 pandemic, the climate crisis, and poverty, as well as charitable behavior and (iii) epidemiological data. The experimental results show that donations to diverse social concerns are partially substituted by donations to the Covid-19 fund; yet, this substitution does not fully replace all other social concerns. Over time we observe no systematic trend in charitable donations. In regards to the determinants of individual donations, we observe that women donate more, people taking actions against Covid-19 and against poverty donate more, while those fearing risks from poverty donate less. In addition, we observe that the population under consideration is sensitive to the needs of others, enhancing total donations for higher Covid-19 incidence. For donations to each charity, we find that trusting a given charitable organization is the strongest explanatory factor of donations.JEL: L3, D64, Q54, I3, D9

Highlights

Understanding the drivers of human behavior is essential when facing global shocks such as the Covid-19 pandemic
Our main results show that systematic predictors of total donations are the epidemiological situation, gender, previous charity donations, as well as self-reported Covid-19 actions, poverty risk perceptions and actions
This paper presents evidence on long-term (10 months) substitution effects that the Covid-19 pandemic has on other social concerns

Summary

INTRODUCTION

Understanding the drivers of human behavior is essential when facing global shocks such as the Covid-19 pandemic. This study contributes to the literature addressing the long term (10 months) impact of the pandemic on social preferences by investigating the substitution effects in social concerns with respect to Covid-19, the climate crisis, and poverty alleviation. A common concern of scientists, governments, and supra-national agencies is that the pandemic might induce a financial crisis amplifying inequality and severe poverty (von Braun et al, 2020) Within this context, we present evidence on the long-term substitution effects that the Covid-19 pandemic might have on other social priorities by means of real-life donations to charities. These findings suggest that people react to the context and adapt their donation behavior to the broader set of calls for donations, but the aggregate social concern (altruism) is not reduced by the pandemic The latter represents additional evidence on the mixed results in the literature with respect to the impact of the Covid-19 on social preferences (see section 2). This is in line with the emphasis of Ostrom (1990) on the relevance of trust as a precondition to successfully overcome collective action challenges

RELATED LITERATURE

EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN

Experimental Procedures

RESULTS

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION

ETHICS STATEMENT