TY - JOUR
T1 - Local Norms, Political Partisanship, and Pandemic Response
T2 - Evidence from the United States
AU - Lipsitz, Keena
AU - Pop-Eleches, Grigore
AU - Robertson, Graeme B.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s), 2023.
PY - 2024/3/21
Y1 - 2024/3/21
N2 - A growing literature focuses on the role of political partisanship in shaping attitudes and behaviors during the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. We provide a different perspective, by developing a theory of how partisanship interacts with another important factor that shapes how people think and behave in the context of the pandemic—local norms. Using a combination of survey data and a survey experiment, we demonstrate the importance of norms in shaping both support for social distancing and reported social-distancing behavior, particularly amongst independents and Republicans. We then confirm that perceptions of norms are indeed tied to what is actually happening around people—that their partisanship does not blind them to reality. Our analysis is the first to examine how partisanship and norms interact with each other and helps to explain why partisan differences matter more in some places than in others.
AB - A growing literature focuses on the role of political partisanship in shaping attitudes and behaviors during the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. We provide a different perspective, by developing a theory of how partisanship interacts with another important factor that shapes how people think and behave in the context of the pandemic—local norms. Using a combination of survey data and a survey experiment, we demonstrate the importance of norms in shaping both support for social distancing and reported social-distancing behavior, particularly amongst independents and Republicans. We then confirm that perceptions of norms are indeed tied to what is actually happening around people—that their partisanship does not blind them to reality. Our analysis is the first to examine how partisanship and norms interact with each other and helps to explain why partisan differences matter more in some places than in others.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85178200337&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85178200337&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1017/S1537592723002864
DO - 10.1017/S1537592723002864
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85178200337
SN - 1537-5927
VL - 22
SP - 247
EP - 262
JO - Perspectives on Politics
JF - Perspectives on Politics
IS - 1
ER -