Citizen Response Research Articles

Citizen liabilities for state-perpetrated injustices in non-democracies: toward a new authorisation account

ABSTRACT When states perpetrate injustices, do their individual citizens develop liabilities to repair such wrongdoings? Most existing accounts of citizens’ liabilities for state-perpetrated injustices, whilst applicable across certain democratic contexts, struggle to provide robust accounts of the grounds and nature of liabilities for citizens in non-democratic contexts. This problematically leaves a lacuna when it comes to the responsibilities and appropriate responses of citizens in these states. This article advances a distinctive two-pronged authorisation-based account applicable to non-democracies. Objective authorisers are individuals who derive presumptive benefits, are comparably better-off under, and can reliably influence the decision-making processes over the injustice perpetrated by the state. Subjective authorisers are citizens who autonomously endorse their state as credible interpreters and upholders of their aims in relation to the injustices in question. Both objective and subjective authorisers of the state in relation to particular injustices perpetrated, are liable to compensate, actively oppose, and commemorate the victims of state-perpetrated injustices. This account will be shown to be empirically applicable to a large number of minimally decent non-democratic states, where the political elite enjoy moderate popular support over their incorporation and reflection of citizen interests and preferences in their governance, despite the absence of formal democratic electoral mechanisms. This authorisation-based view differs from existing accounts oriented around complicity and participatory intentions, in better accounting for non-participants who are nevertheless intuitively liable for the actions of their authorised state, as well as circumventing structural shortcomings affecting complicity-centric accounts.

To wear or not to wear, was that the question? Understanding citizen responses to COVID‐19 crisis management in social media across Europe

AbstractThis study aims to gain qualitative insights about and compare public responses to COVID‐19 crisis management during the different pandemic phases and across three countries—Norway, Sweden and Italy. To do so, we have carried out a qualitative content analysis of a selection of 2606 tweets containing the term ‘face mask’ in Italian, Norwegian, and Swedish published between March 1, 2020 and June 31, 2022. The article combines risk society theses with social practice theory as a lens through which to examine public responses to crisis management. Analyzing the data from Norway, Sweden, and Italy, this article discusses the extent to which individualism, reflexive modernization, and cosmopolitanism account for citizen responses to authority's crisis management efforts in each of the countries during the different phases of the pandemic. Findings highlight the crucial role of socio‐cultural contexts that shape citizen responses to crisis management over time, showcasing a spectrum of attitudes ranging from scepticism and critique to trust and compliance. This comparative analysis underscores the importance of considering the dynamic interplay between criticism and support, individualism and collectivism, as well as global and local experiences in understanding diverse and situated societal responses to crisis management during a global pandemic. The article also points to social media as a meaningful arena where individuals and groups share information and participate in discussions that shape collective views, thus having a significant role in shaping citizen responses to COVID‐19 crisis management and influencing decision‐making.

Against Dictatorship, against Backsliding? Examining the Effect of Serbian Anti-Government Protests on the 2020 Electoral Boycott

The power of the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) has been steadily growing ever since 2012. The party has successfully taken control of all levels of government in Serbia, and the country has suffered from gradual democratic backsliding as a result. In this article, we focus on two protest waves in Serbia between 2017 and 2019. Crucially, a number of opposition parties involved in the more recent protest wave boycotted the 2020 parliamentary election. This article analyzes the characteristics of the citizen-led response in local communities across Serbia and estimates its electoral impact using a difference-in-differences approach. The case of Serbia not only elucidates modes of citizen response and their impact in post-Communist Europe but also provides comparative insights for the potential for citizen-led resistance to mobilize against backsliding in other countries. The objectives of the article are twofold. First, the article uses an original data set of Serbian protest events between 2017 and 2019 to ascertain how the two protest waves were conducted, and how citizens respond to democratic backsliding. Second, using data on municipal-level turnout and SNS vote share in the 2020 parliamentary election, we examine the average electoral impact of protest and, related to that, we evaluate the success of opposition parties in mobilizing voters for the electoral boycott. The article investigates whether SNS-led democratic backsliding is resilient to sustained citizen-led mobilization or whether this bottom-up resistance challenges the notion that “stabilitocracies” such as Serbia are immune to fundamental political change.

Between conflict and reciprocal habituation: Human-wild boar coexistence in urban areas

Urbanization is an ongoing global environmental change. Wildlife may respond using anthropized environments and resources, which is known as synurbization, creating human-wildlife interactions. Wild boar (Sus scrofa) populations have become common in urban areas, including the metropolitan area of Barcelona. Humans respond to wild boars in urban environments either habituating, with lower conflict perception and higher wild boar acceptance, or sensitizing, with reduced tolerance towards wild boars. Since citizen response influences conflict management, this study analysed the drivers of human responses, which should allow adopting socially-accepted measures to manage synurbic wild boar populations. Interviews to 1956 Barcelona citizens were performed, grouping the response variables to score citizen and urban characteristics, as well as citizen lay-knowledge, emotions, experiences, and perception of wild boar. Five citizen clusters were identified: cluster 1 (3.3 %), highly habituated and active wild boar feeder; cluster 2 (11.3 %), habituated to wild boars with positive feelings; cluster 3 (19.8 %), not habituated nor sensitized, willing to maintain urban wild boar populations; cluster 4 (29.1 %), sensitized and concerned, defending to reduce wild boar; and cluster 5 (40.1 %), highly sensitized and proposing to reduce or even eliminate wild boar. Positive attitudes associated wild boar to aesthetic value, closeness to nature and sympathy, and were more frequent in young citizens with urban background and high education, animal lovers habituated to wild boar through contact without negative experiences. Conversely, negative attitudes were concerned about city fouling, safety or health, accepted lethal management measures, and were more frequent in older citizens with rural background, lower education, low contact with wild boar or sensitized through negative experiences. We document for the first time the sensitization and reciprocal habituation of humans to wild boar in urban areas. The identification of the drivers of citizen attitudes towards urban wildlife should be useful to design socially-accepted management measures.

On the Use of Instrumental and Macroseismic Data to Evaluate Ground-Motion Models: The 2019 Mw 6.4 Durres, Albania, Earthquake Sequence

Abstract In this study, we analyze the existing ground-motion models (GMMs) applicable in Albania for horizontal peak ground acceleration (PGA) and spectral acceleration (SA) using instrumental ground motions, and also incorporate online citizen responses from “Did you feel it?” (DYFI) to compensate for the sparse distribution of strong-motion stations and provide better constraints for near-fault motions. Our evaluation focuses primarily on the damaging 26 November 2019 Mw 6.4 Durres earthquake, incorporating 1360 DYFI online citizen responses collected after the Durres mainshock event, along with two significant September foreshocks and two large November aftershocks with a moment magnitude Mw>5.0. In general, the DYFI intensities exhibit higher values than instrumentation data, and we find that SA at 0.3 s better represents the observed macroseismic intensities for all events. In the meantime, the reversible relationships between macroseismic intensities and PGA/SA, as established by Oliveti et al. (2022) based on a dataset from the European region (Italy), show a better fit for the converted DYFI observations when compared to instrumental data, in contrast to the fit of the converted DYFI observations by Worden et al. (2012). This underscores the importance of regional characterization when considering the datasets from online citizen responses. The extensive DYFI intensities set, particularly in near-fault regions, significantly improves the evaluation of GMMs due to the sparse distribution of instrumentation data. Moreover, we account for data variance, and applied the log-likelihood approaches to select and rank a candidate set of GMMs. In addition to recommending a set of GMMs suitable for the Albania region, our study highlights the valuable applications of using online citizen responses like DYFI for ground-motion estimations, which are crucial in regions with limited instrumental station coverage. These online citizen response datasets contribute to better constraining the selection of GMMs, although careful consideration is necessary when relating intensity to ground motion for regional characterization. Our study makes a significant contribution to GMM selection and provides a valuable reference for the logic tree structure in subsequent seismic hazard assessments on both national and regional scales.

Communicating democratic subversions to citizens

ABSTRACT In many countries, leaders have violated democratic norms without being punished. Citizens have often acquiesced to such subversions of democracy, despite widespread condemnation of policies by the media, opposing politicians and international organisations. A focal question following from this is whether attempts at persuading citizens to tolerate or oppose subversions of democracy are effective. Building on literature about the role of partisanship in acquiescence to democratic backsliding and subversions of democracy, we ask how communication surrounding democratic subversion shapes this behaviour. Specifically, we question whether the reasons governments and opponents provide for and against policy proposals that subvert democratic norms affect the likelihood that citizens oppose democratic subversions by governments they favour. We conduct a vignette experiment with 1,300 respondents from Germany and Poland, and show that political communication, especially how governments motivate their proposals, has substantial effects on the likelihood that citizens acquiesce to democratic subversions. Our results highlight the importance of the rhetoric surrounding attempts at democratic backsliding, which has so far been neglected by research on citizen responses to democratic backsliding.

Psychosocial detailing as a methodological procedure

The interdisciplinary study is devoted to substantiating the significance of intellectual detailing as the usual order of carrying out professional methodological thinking on covital and personal events of human everyday life. The object of study is psychosocial detailing as a means of methodology in socio-humanitarianism, and its subject is the named detailing as a thinking action aimed at clarifying and explaining what happened as a personal or personified social event. The result of scientific research was the confirmation of a hypothesis consisting of two statements. The first indicates that the methodological procedure of psycho-social detailing of socially important phenomena and processes will ensure the identification of micro-connections between social and psychological mechanisms that have an impact on the behavior and activities of people in various life situations. In particular, it has been proven that the role of interrelationships between these mechanisms is performed by psychological and social details, which, due to complementarity and co-organization, form a micro-event field of interaction of the individual as a source of psycho-spiritual and environment as a socio-cultural experience of the ethnic group in space and time. The second statement, which received confirmation, states the perspective: the described methodological procedure enables prediction of social events, taking into consideration the potential response of citizens to certain events. The deed organization of psychosocial detailing of a social or life event indicates that the scenario of potential reactions is implemented by the method of extrapolation on the basis of previously acquired knowledge and on the exhaustiveness of interpretations of micro-event connections. Therefore, the methodological procedure of psychosocial detailing is fundamentally important for interdisciplinary research in the field of socio-humanitarian studies and during the creation of social prognosis.

Who Gets Credit? Citizen Responses to Local Public Goods

ABSTRACTIn decentralized systems, citizens struggle to identify which level of government provides local goods. This problem is particularly salient in weakly institutionalized party environments, where politicians at different levels of government are less likely to benefit from partisan coattail effects. This article asks how citizens attribute credit for local public goods. I argue that citizens have a strong tendency to attribute credit to local politicians. As a result, citizens will respond differently to credit-claiming behavior by local and national politicians. Local politicians experience a ceiling effect, in which credit claiming has no effect on how citizens attribute credit. However, national politicians have no such ceiling and can claim credit to increase the likelihood that citizens will attribute credit to them. As a result, both political actors can receive credit for the same local goods. The article tests and supports these theoretical predictions using a vignette survey experiment in Colombia.

Developing the Opioid Rapid Response System™ for Lay Citizen Response to the Opioid Overdose Crisis: a Randomized Controlled Trial.

Emergency responders face challenges in arriving timely to administer naloxone in opioid overdoses. Therefore, interest in having lay citizens administer naloxone nasal spray has emerged. These citizens, however, must be recruited and trained, and be in proximity to the overdose. This study aimed to develop the Opioid Rapid Response System (ORRS)tm to meet this need by developing a system to recruit and train citizen responders and evaluate outcomes in a randomized clinical trial. ORRS recruitment messages and training platform were developed iteratively and then outcomes for each were evaluated in a randomized, unblinded two-arm waitlist-controlled trial. ORRS was field tested in 5 Indiana counties, recruiting adult citizen responders (age 18 or older) who did not self-identity as a certified first responder. Participants were recruited using either personal or communal messages and then randomly assigned to online naloxone training and waitlisted-control conditions. Pre- and post-surveys were administered online to measure the exposure to recruitment messages and training effects on knowledge of opioid overdose, confidence responding, concerns about responding, and intent to respond. Of the 220 randomized participants (114 training, 106 waitlisted-control), 140 were analyzed (59 training, 81 waitlisted-control). Recruited participants more frequently identified with communal appeal than with the personal appeal (chi-square = 53.5; p < 0.0001). Between-group differences for intervention effects were significant for knowledge of overdose signs (Cohen's d = 1.17), knowledge of overdose management (d = 1.72), self-efficacy (d = 1.39), and concerns (d = 1.31), but not for intent (d = 0.17), which suffered from a ceiling effect. ORRS provides stronger support for efficacy than that reported for other training interventions and the digital modality eases rapid dissemination.Trial Registration: NCT04589676.

Advanced practice nursing in France: Social capital assessment.

France is in the initial stage of development of the advanced practice nursing role. Social capital is essential to move this development forward, as evidenced by similar global movements resulting in the establishment of the advanced practice role of nurses. A pilot project examined the general response of French citizens (social capital) to the idea of advanced nursing practice in their country. The overwhelming majority of participants were in support of advanced nursing practice, with 90% of the participants answering "Yes" to the question "Would you trust and feel safe having a Nurse Practitioner (APRN) provide your primary care instead of a physician?" Social capital is needed in many areas of health care and may be enhanced by strong social capital within the citizenry.

Perceptions of government guidance and citizen responses during the COVID-19 pandemic: A cross-country analysis

The public perception of government approaches to pandemic management has played an important role in citizen responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. Although the state and associated health institutions should feasibly be sources of epistemic authority, the pandemic has undermined their legitimacy as anti-science rhetoric proliferated and ‘fake news’ spread rapidly. In this paper, we present a comparative analysis of interviews with citizens across four different countries and explore how a lack of consistency and clarity in public health guidance from government and other trusted institutions led to a polarisation in public perceptions and mixed understandings of the pandemic. Using interview data collected across Brazil, Japan, Spain and the United Kingdom, we explored whether there were differences in the extent to which both state governments and scientific institutions were perceived as epistemic authorities through managing the pandemic. Participants grappled with a distrust of government guidelines, finding alternative sources of information to manage perceived infection risk, and make decisions around self-medication. Our analysis suggests several components were key to maintaining trust – and therefore epistemic authority – during the pandemic: reliability of the information delivered by different government bodies, including clarity of messaging; reliability of the government bodies themselves, including whether officials conducted themselves appropriately; and honesty about claims to expertise, including communicating when the scientific evidence was unclear or inconclusive. Our data suggests that honest communication about the limits of their knowledge would assist governments in engendering trust among citizens, and theoretically, compliance with public health guidelines.

Do citizens trust trustworthy artificial intelligence? Experimental evidence on the limits of ethical AI measures in government

This study examines the impact of ethical AI information on citizens' trust in and policy support for governmental AI projects. Unlike previous work on direct users of AI, this study focuses on the general public. Two online survey experiments presented participants with information on six types of ethical AI measures: legal compliance, ethics-by-design measures, data-gathering limitations, human-in-the-loop, non-discrimination, and technical robustness. Results reveal that general ethical AI information has little to no effect on trust, perceived trustworthiness or policy support among citizens. Prior attitudes and experiences, including privacy concerns, trust in government, and trust in AI, instead form good predictors. These findings suggest that short-term communication efforts on ethical AI practices have minimal impact. The findings suggest that a more long-term, comprehensive approach is necessary to building trust in governmental AI projects, addressing citizens' underlying concerns and experiences. As governments' use of AI becomes more ubiquitous, understanding citizen responses is crucial for fostering trust, perceived trustworthiness and policy support for AI-based policies and initiatives.

A Sociolinguistic Analysis of Newspaper Coverage and Reader Response to Covid-19 Reports

Studies attest to the importance of official languages in health communication in multilingual societies. However, the challenge lies in using an official language in ways that enable both majority and minority language speakers to identify with their sociocultural orientations when using a lingua franca. With the emergence of Covid-19, this challenge has come to the forefront following surveys on citizen responses to health messages. The study examines the themes, narrative viewpoints, language modes of newspaper reports on Covid-19, and reader responses to these reports. We aim to determine the implications of reader response on the credibility, severity, and transmissibility of Covid-19. The contents of three Nigerian newspapers (The Guardian, Punch, and Premium Times) were analyzed using quantitative and discourse analysis. The results showed that the themes of newspaper reports focused on challenges, progress made, preparedness, and containment measures. The language mode was predominantly negative, using fear appeals. Audience responses followed the same themes as the newspapers but demonstrated a remarkable shift in narrative viewpoint and language mode, which in Nigerian style English indicated low source credibility, ethnic divisions, and the denial of the severity and transmissibility of Covid-19. Readers’ responses to newspaper coverage of Covid-19 reinforce the view among scholars that trust in information sources is linked to attitudes toward health risks.

The digital world and atypical work: Perceptions and difficulties of teleworking in Hungary and Romania

IT solutions have been transforming the world of work, albeit with varying intensity, for decades. They affect, among other things, the organisation of work, work structures, employment patterns and working time. Solutions such as artificial intelligence (AI), business intelligence (BI), robotic process automation (RPA), workflow, process mining, etc. are now a daily reality in the corporate sector, be it physical or mental work. However, the spread of digital solutions across organisations, spaces and sectors is uneven. Can the impact of this uneven spread be observed in employment, especially in atypical forms of employment? In our questionnaire research, we seek to establish how employees with tertiary education in two pairs of sectors (Hungarian and Romanian non-profit sectors and Hungarian non-profit and for-profit sectors) in two countries perceive some demographic characteristics of teleworking. In our research, we analysed the responses of Hungarian and Romanian working-age citizens with tertiary education who had been working in telework for at least one year at the time of completing the questionnaire. In addition to the deterioration of work relationships and the lack of personal contacts already shown by many studies, it is observed that the work-life balance is upset for single people and those without children, while the number of children does not influence opinions on teleworking. The differences observed and presented in the study are typically not gender-specific but largely based on globalised perspectives.

Reactions to experts in deliberative democracy: the 2016–2018 Irish Citizens’ Assembly

ABSTRACT Many citizens support the involvement of experts in political decision-making, yet we know little about how citizens react to expert opinions. Bridging recent evidence on technocratic attitudes and deliberative democracy, we study citizen responses to experts during influential deliberative mini-publics. Combining automated speech transcription of over 380,000 spoken words and quantitative text analysis, we estimate the topic prevalence in all expert testimonials, Q&A sessions, and other agenda items in the Irish Citizens’ Assembly (2016–2018), one of the prime examples of impactful deliberative forums. We find that inputs of experts structure subsequent discussions but do not dominate them. This correlation persists with various measures of topic prevalence and is robust to several modelling approaches. We also find that participants tended to react less strongly to testimonials by female experts. These conditional effects should encourage organisers to invite experts with diverse backgrounds in order to enhance inclusive decision-making.

The Defoliation of America: Agent Orange Chemicals, Citizens, and Protests

The use of industrial chemicals to eradicate foliage in the name of economic, scientific, and military progress was a cornerstone of post–World War II US policy. Needless to say, their use also provoked significant controversy within the United States and across the world. It is that controversy that Amy H. Hay explores in her new book. The Defoliation of America is not only a history of Agent Orange chemicals (phenoxy herbicides) but is, more importantly, an examination of how diverse networks of grassroots activists questioned state and scientific authority. The book offers new and interesting insights into the history of how “ordinary citizens” became activists and the processes through which they challenged the use of phenoxy herbicides in agriculture, land management, and warfare.The book is divided into three sections each containing three chapters, as well as an introduction and conclusion. The first section explores the origins of phenoxy herbicides and “the quickening of conscience” around their use in the United States, Europe, and Vietnam. The second section offers case studies of phenoxy spraying and citizen response in the US West, while the third considers the toxic legacies of phenoxy herbicides, including their use in the War on Drugs. The Defoliation of America is an expansive book that links disparate networks of activism together in a coherent way and does an excellent job of interrogating the contested nature of knowledge making around phenoxy herbicides. I look forward to teaching it in my upper division science, technology, and society classes.I was particularly intrigued by Hay's eloquent descriptions of how people became activists. For some, it was reading about or participating in Operation Ranch Hand, while for others it was the spraying of their bodies or their land. This fascinated me because it highlighted something that Hay does so well, situating scientific authority and processes of knowledge making within larger structures of power. Many of the protest networks that Hay described were successful in contesting the scientific and state authority to determine the nature of proof and harm, but it is also true that many of the successes of these “anti-toxics” campaigns were little more than a way for chemical companies to buy time: US policies gave chemical companies the benefit of the doubt when it came to any potential harm. The protests of “ordinary citizens” shaped the discourse around phenoxy herbicides use in war and agriculture, but so too did the more powerful chemical companies—most often by sowing doubts of chemical harm deep within our policies and institutions.My reading of Hay's book left me with a plethora of negative emotions. I was angry for the countless Vietnamese harmed and still yet to be harmed in the name of the Cold War. I felt sad for the US soldiers who had survived war only to die from so-called manufacturing mistakes or improper use. I empathized with the people catalyzed to be activists and the struggles they faced. I was again disheartened by yet another story of agricultural laborers living with outsized exposure. Perhaps that is why I found the story of Ida Honorof in chapter 5 so compelling. For all of the stories of contested knowledge making that Hay describes, the one characteristic that permeated them all was the lack of significant accountability. Ida Honorof, first and foremost, was about accountability. She advocated for incarceration of those who had exposed the public to widespread harm. I think her observations around lack of accountability still ring true today. Thus, the main question I could not shake after reading the Defoliation of America is what accountability would actually look like. I think it would look like what Ida said it would, at least in part.The Defoliation of America is an original and fascinating look at the contested history of knowledge making around phenoxy herbicides. But I think one of its most lasting contributions will come from the larger questions it asks—important questions that have resonance for who we want to be today and what our future agriculture looks like. In particular, throughout the book, Hay struggles with the why of chemical herbicides. I think that this is key. Agricultural historians have written so well on the what and the how of pesticides. Perhaps we need to take Hay's lead and ask the why question more.

Experts or Politicians? Citizen Responses to Vaccine Endorsements across Five OECD Countries

Who is more influential in shaping citizens' health-related behaviors, experts or politicians? We conduct five conjoint experiments on 6,255 residents of France, Germany, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States, asking them to evaluate COVID-19 vaccines alongside randomly varying endorsements from national politicians and medical professionals. In every country, our results show that citizens are more likely to rely on medical professionals, the experts, more than on politicians when choosing a COVID-19 vaccine. Even after accounting for citizens' political alignment with the government, our evidence reveals that politicians play a very limited role in shaping vaccine acceptance. These results have implications for the role of political elites in shaping people's behaviors amid a large-scale crisis.

Culture of Honor and COVID-19: Regional Mitigation Efforts in the United States During the Pandemic

As the COVID-19 pandemic struck in early 2020, states in the United States (U.S.) varied widely in the arrival of the first case of the virus, the official response of government officials and citizens, and the overall impact of the virus. The Culture of Honor, a reputation-based system more prevalent in the U.S. South and West, is linked with lawlessness or mistrust of the law where it exists, fierce independence, and condones aggressive behaviors, particularly in response to threat. The current project explored the influence of the Culture of Honor on perceptions of the legitimacy of COVID-19 messaging, government actions and citizens responses, and overall impact of the pandemic at the state level. It was predicted that the overall numbers of citizens infected by COVID-19 would be higher in culture of honor states, that any actions taken by government officials would be strict and perceived negatively by citizens residing in culture of honor states, and that citizens would be unlikely to follow any imposed government restrictions. Publicly available data were compiled for each of the U.S. states including total number of COVID-19 cases, total deaths, how the elected officials managed any coordinated response (such as issuing executive orders, any stay-at-home or lockdown orders), and coded evidence of citizens violating any of these orders such as by protesting or showing up at public locations that were currently closed. I am deeply indebted to Luke Conway for providing access to an individual-level dataset collected via Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) that included 978 people from across the U.S. who had responded to items related to these variables of interest. Analyses indicated that individuals in US states identified as Culture of Honor had seen greater impact to their states of the COVID-19 pandemic as of 2020 in several ways, including higher total number of citizens who tested positive and also died from COVID-19, less support for government action to mitigate the spread, and stronger distrust of information shared by their state authorities about the pandemic. These findings indicate that cultural values including the Culture of Honor could impede state-level attempts to thwart the spread of contagious diseases and other measures intended to protect individuals.

Perceived vulnerability to infectious disease and perceived harmfulness are as predictive of citizen response to COVID-19 as partisanship.

Partisans have biased perceptions of objective conditions. At first glance, the COVID-19 pandemic would appear to be an example of this phenomenon. Noting that most citizens have consistently agreed about the pandemic, I argue that we have overlooked pre-political factors that are as influential as partisanship in shaping citizens' responses to the pandemic. I identify one such construct in perceived vulnerability to infectious disease (PVD). In one cross-sectional study and one panel study, I find that the influence of PVD on citizens' perceptions of COVID-19 equals that of partisanship. I also find that PVD can moderate the influence of partisanship on perceptions of harmfulness, nearly erasing the impact of being a Republican on perceiving COVID-19 as a threat. When led by PVD as well as partisanship to accurately perceive harm, citizens, including Republicans, attribute more responsibility to former president Donald Trump for his failed handling of the crisis.

Interacting With COVID-19: How Population Behavior, Feedback and Memory Shaped Recurrent Waves of the Epidemic

Until the approval of vaccines at the end of 2020, societies relied on non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) in order to control the COVID-19 pandemic. Spontaneous changes in individual behavior might have contributed to or counteracted epidemic control due to NPIs. For example, the population compliance to NPIs may have varied over time as people developed “epidemic fatigue” or altered their perception of the risk and severity of COVID-19. Whereas official measures are well documented, the behavioral response of the citizens is harder to capture. We propose a mathematical model of the societal response, taking into account three main effects: the citizen response dynamics, the authorities’ NPIs, and the occurrence of unpreventable events that significantly alter the virus transmission rate. A key assumption is that a society has a waning memory of the epidemic effects, which reflects on both the severity of the authorities’ NPIs and on the citizens’ compliance to the prescribed rules. This, in turn, feeds back onto the transmission rate of the disease, such that a higher number of hospitalizations decreases the probability of transmission. We show that the model is able to reproduce the COVID-19 dynamics in terms of hospital admissions for several European countries during 2020 over surprisingly long time scales. Also, it is capable of capturing the effects of disturbances (for example the emergence of new virus variants) and can be exploited for implementing control actions to limit such effects. A possible application, illustrated in this letter, consists of exploiting the estimations based on the data of one country, to predict and control the evolution in another country, where the virus spreading is still in an earlier phase.