Varying Cultural Narratives on COVID-19 Changes Policy Support in China

• In Event: Health Policy: Challenges and New Directions

Abstract

Policy scholars are trying to understand better how narrative framing influences public opinion. We advance understanding of narrative influences by synthesizing grid-group Cultural Theory and the Narrative Policy Framework to develop hypotheses about how cultural framing of policies on COVID-19 influences public support. To test these hypotheses, we combine pre-post tests and between-subject tests in a sequence of survey experiments, holding the operational design constant while progressively varying expert narratives. In the first wave, census balanced Chinese respondents (n=615) are not exposed to expert narratives. In the second wave (n=476), three experimental treatments are operationalized: a baseline control group and two groups who are exposed to fact lists of COVID-19 containment and economic policy changes, respectively. In the third wave (n=415), four experimental treatments are operationalized: a baseline control fact list of COVID-19 policy changes and three expert narratives on COVID-19 policy change. These narratives present the goal of policy changes as being to achieve economic efficiency, social equity, and national order or security. In the fourth wave (n=381), all respondents are asked the same survey questions to check whether the effects of exposure to expert narratives persist over time. We find that exposing respondents to fact lists of containment policy change information (not economic policy change information) can move respondents to adopt policy positions closer to the ones espoused by regime experts regardless of cultural predispositions. Moreover, validating our hypotheses, we find that cultural narratives play a powerful role in shaping the general public’s policy positions. Hierarchists support policy changes when the policies were framed as ways to increase national order and security, individualists support policy changes when the policies were framed as ways to increase economic efficiency, and egalitarians support policy changes when the policies were framed as ways to increase social equity. These results hold for both direct and composite measures of attitudes and persist up to one month after exposure.

Authors

• Meng Yuan, Chongqing University

• Ruijia Mo

• Brendon Swedlow, Northern Illinois University