"The Tragedy of the Commons": How Individualism and Collectivism Affected the Spread of the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

Why did COVID-19 hit some countries harder than others? While this question is usually answered based on demographics (e. g., population age), health policy (e.g., quarantine), or economic factors, we argue that cultural variance across countries is just as crucial in understanding how susceptible a society is to the COVID-19 outbreak. To test this hypothesis, we first analyzed data collected across 69 countries and examined the relationship between culture and the impact of COVID. Next, we conducted two studies to validate our findings further and explore the mechanism at hand. As expected, we found that the more individualistic (vs. collectivistic) a country was, the more COVID-19 cases and mortalities it had. We also found that the more individualistic participants were, the higher the chances they would not adhere to epidemic prevention measures. These findings are important in understanding the spread of the pandemic, devising optimal exit strategies from lockdowns, and persuading the population to get the new vaccine against the virus.

Keywords: COVID-19; Hofstede; individualism–collectivism; public adherence; the tragedy of the commons.

Figure 1

The relationship between countries' individualism score and COVID-19 deaths within a given country for OECD countries (for country codes see Supplementary Materials; Study 1).

Figure 2

Serial mediation model of collectivism norms, collective attitudes, COVID-19 planned behavior, and relevant decision-making (Study 2). *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01.