What Factors Drive the Satisfaction of Citizens on Governments' Responses to COVID-19?

Chen, Cathy W S; Lee, Sangyeol; Dong, Manh Cuong; Taniguchi, Masanobu

OBJECTIVES This research scrutinizes the important factors influencing the satisfaction of citizens on their governments' responses to the COVID-19 pandemic based on an open-sourced survey of 14 countries. METHODS To collect information of public sentiment towards governments' reactions to COVID-19, we consider five factors for analysis: the number of confirmed cases per million population, the number of deaths per million population, governments' containment and health policies, their stringency policies, and their economic support policies. We examine the Kendall correlation of variables in the 14 countries and use the wild bootstrap method for regression models to find important regressors. RESULTS Our results show that people pay stronger attention on the results of governments' battle against COVID-19 (number of confirmed cases and deaths per million population) rather than what policies they initiate. Health policy and economic support do influence the approval of any national response to COVID-19. We also find that public satisfaction in Japan and South Korea toward the two governments' responses to the pandemic varies greatly versus that of other countries' citizens to their governments' responses. CONCLUSIONS The results herein offer some suggestions to governments when making policies to balance public health, livelihood, and economic support.