Explaining Compliance with Public Health Measures Using Satellite Image Data

• In Event: Technology, Surveillance, and Artificial Intelligence in Global Health

Abstract

Why citizens of some countries comply with COVID-19 related restrictions imposed by governments better than those of other countries? Facing the unprecedented global scale pandemic of the COVID-19, virtually all governments have implemented strict COVID-19 related measures to contain the spread of the virus. However, not all governments were successful in limiting the spread of the virus: COVID-19 fatality rates vary widely from country to country, and this is in large part due to citizens’ compliance to the COVID-19 related measures. In this research project, we try to answer why citizens of some countries comply better than those of others. Focusing on the country’s regime type, we argue that democracies where citizens assume ownership of policy measures and strict autocracies where citizens are forced to comply facilitate better compliance than the regimes in the middle, i.e. anocracies, where both policy ownership and forced compliance are weaker. Empirically, we utilize night-time satellite image data of capital cities around the world to test the argument in a cross-national setting. We find that citizens of both democracies and autocracies indeed comply better than those of anocracies. We also show that compliance by democratic citizens tends to erode as time passes. To our knowledge, this research is the first attempt to examine the cross-national variation in compliance with the COVID-19 policies and thus contributes to better understanding of conditions conducive to more effective public health policies.

Authors

• Byungwon Woo, Yonsei University

• Jihwan Jeong, Harvard University

• Hyunjin Yim, Yonsei University