Culture and effectiveness of distance restriction policies: evidence from the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

Natural disasters bring indelible negative impacts to human beings, and people usually adopt some post hoc strategies to alleviate such impacts. However, the same strategies may have different effects in different countries (or regions), which is rarely paid attention by the academic community. In the context of COVID-19, we examine the effect of distance restriction policies (DRP) on reducing human mobility and thus inhibiting the spread of the virus. By establishing a multi-period difference-in-differences model to analyse the unique panel dataset constructed by 44 countries, we show that DRP does significantly reduce mobility, but the effectiveness varies from country to country. We built a moderating effect model to explain the differences from the cultural perspective and found that DRP can be more effective in reducing human mobility in countries with a lower indulgence index. The results remain robust when different sensitivity analyses are performed. Our conclusions call for governments to adapt their policies to the impact of disasters rather than copy each other.