Abstract

Policies adopted to curb the spread of COVID-19 impose limits on individual freedom and although some citizens have consistently supported containment policy, others have resisted. Beyond political orientation, however, little research has explored the attitudinal basis of support for stringent virus containment policy. We argue that individuals with high levels of public service motivation (PSM) will more readily accept the sacrifices entailed by containment policy and thereby express stronger support for it. Second, we argue that the positive relationship between PSM and containment policy support is both mediated by trust in government and moderated by bureaucratic personality, the latter denoting a favorable orientation towards rules in general. Using a country-wide sample of 568 South Korean citizens collected in the fall of 2021, we estimate a conditional process model of support for COVID-19 policy stringency. We find that PSM has both a direct and indirect relationship with support via trust in government and that the indirect effect is moderated by bureaucratic personality, though not in the expected direction. We also report the results of a post hoc analysis which suggests interesting differences in how individuals evaluate rules that limit individual versus organizational freedom.

摘要

为遏制 COVID-19 传播而采取的政策对个人自由施加了限制，尽管一些公民一直支持遏制政策，但其他人则反对。然而，除了政治取向之外，很少有研究探讨支持严格的病毒遏制政策的态度基础。我们认为，具有高水平公共服务动机 (PSM) 的个人将更容易接受遏制政策带来的牺牲，从而表达对遏制政策的更强支持。其次，我们认为，PSM 与遏制政策支持之间的正相关关系既受对政府的信任所调节，又受官僚人格的调节，后者表示对规则的总体偏好。使用 2021 年秋季收集的 568 名韩国公民的全国样本，我们估计支持 COVID-19 政策严格性的条件过程模型。我们发现，PSM 通过对政府的信任与支持有直接和间接的关系，并且间接影响受官僚人格的调节，尽管不是在预期的方向上。我们还报告了事后分析的结果，该分析表明在个人如何评估限制个人与组织自由的规则方面存在有趣的差异。