COVID-19 continues to spread across the globe at an exponential speed, infecting millions and overwhelming even the most prepared healthcare systems. Concerns are looming that the healthcare systems in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) are mostly unprepared to combat the virus because of limited resources. The problems in LMICs are exacerbated by the fact that citizens in these countries generally exhibit low trust in the healthcare system because of its low quality, which could trigger a number of uncooperative behaviors. In this paper, we focus on one such behavior and investigate the relationship between trust in the healthcare system and the probability of potential treatment-seeking behavior upon the appearance of the first symptoms of COVID-19. First, we provide motivating evidence from a unique national online survey administered in Armenia–a post-Soviet LMIC country. We then present results from a large-scale survey experiment in Armenia that provides causal evidence supporting the investigated relationship. Our main finding is that a more trustworthy healthcare system enhances the probability of potential treatment-seeking behavior when observing the initial symptoms.

COVID-19 继续以指数速度在全球传播，感染了数百万人，甚至让准备最充分的医疗系统不堪重负。人们越来越担心，由于资源有限，低收入和中等收入国家 (LMIC) 的医疗保健系统大多没有做好对抗病毒的准备。由于医疗保健系统质量低下，这些国家的公民普遍对医疗保健系统表现出较低的信任度，这可能引发许多不合作行为，这加剧了中低收入国家的问题。在本文中，我们重点关注此类行为，并调查对医疗保健系统的信任与出现 COVID-19 首发症状时潜在寻求治疗行为的概率之间的关系。首先，我们提供了来自亚美尼亚（后苏联中低收入国家）进行的一项独特的全国在线调查的激励证据。然后，我们展示了在亚美尼亚进行的一项大规模调查实验的结果，该结果提供了支持所调查关系的因果证据。我们的主要发现是，更值得信赖的医疗保健系统在观察初始症状时提高了潜在寻求治疗行为的可能性。