Sustained Government Engagement Improves Subsequent Pandemic Risk Reporting In Conflict Zones

Dotan Haim,Nico Ravanilla,Renard Sexton

doi:10.1017/s0003055420001148

Abstract

Community information sharing is crucial to a government’s ability to respond to a disaster or a health emergency, such as a pandemic. In conflict zones, however, citizens and local leaders often lack trust in state institutions and are unwilling to cooperate, risking costly delays and information gaps. We report results from a randomized experiment in the Philippines regarding government efforts to provide services and build trust with rural communities in a conflict-affected region. We find that the outreach program increased the probability that village leaders provide time-sensitive pandemic risk information critical to the regional Covid-19 Task Force by 20%. The effect is largest for leaders who, at baseline, were skeptical about government capacity and fairness and had neutral or positive attitudes towards rebels. A test of mechanisms suggests that treated leaders updated their beliefs about government competence and shows that neither security improvement nor project capture by the rebels are primary drivers. These findings highlight the important role that government efforts to build connections with conflict-affected communities can play in determining public health outcomes during times of national emergencies.

Highlights

In the context of a society-wide emergency, community experience with concerted government attention and service provision may result in increased willingness to cooperate with crisis response efforts, on the part of local leaders in particular
We find that kapitans from villages who participated in the Usap Tayo program were 20% more likely than leaders in control villages to respond to the Task Force with timely COVID-19 risk information
Comparing the response rates for communities that had been participating in Usap Tayo versus those that had not, we find that treated villages were 10 percentage points (20%) more likely to respond: 61% versus 51%

Summary

Introduction

Emergency responses are slow and inaccurate, often failing to arrest the human toll of developing crises (Gensheimer et al 1999) This is important in the realm of global public health, as conflict zones frequently serve as “ground-zero” for infections that spread worldwide (Gayer et al 2007).. Emergencies may heighten existing grievances and exacerbate perceptions that the government is unreliable and unresponsive, wiping out gains from the government’s trust-building efforts (Harris, Holloway, and Peters 2019) These two very different responses to crisis are exemplified by the effects of the 2004 tsunami, which is credited with bringing about the conditions for peace in Aceh, Indonesia, while at the same time exacerbating conflict and increasing militant recruitment in coastal regions of Sri Lanka (Le Billon and Waizenegger 2007)

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Results

Conclusion