Covid-19 Lockdown Preferences

We report and interpret preferences of a sample of the Dutch adult population for different strategies to end the so-called ‘intelligent lockdown’ which their government had put in place in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Using a discrete choice experiment, we invited participants to make a series of choices between policy scenarios aimed at relaxing the lockdown, which were specified not in terms of their nature (e.g. whether or not to allow schools to re-open) but in terms of their effects along seven dimensions. These included health-related effects, but also impacts on the economy, education, and personal income. From the observed choices, we were able to infer the implicit trade-offs made by the Dutch between these policy effects. For example, we find that the average citizen, in order to avoid one fatality directly or indirectly related to COVID-19, is willing to accept a lasting lag in the educational performance of 18 children, or a lasting (>3 years) and substantial (>15%) reduction in net income of 77 households. We explore heterogeneity across individuals in terms of these trade-offs by means of latent class analysis. Our results suggest that most citizens are willing to trade-off health-related and other effects of the lockdown, implying a consequentialist ethical perspective. Somewhat surprisingly, we find that the elderly, known to be at relatively high risk of being affected by the virus, are relatively reluctant to sacrifice economic pain and educational disadvantages for the younger generation, to avoid fatalities. We also identify a so-called taboo trade-off aversion amongst a substantial share of our sample, being an aversion to accept morally problematic policies that simultaneously imply higher fatality numbers and lower taxes. We explain various ways in which our results can be of value to policy makers in the context of the COVID-19 and future pandemics.

本研究报告并阐释了荷兰成年人群样本对终止所谓“智能封锁”的不同策略的偏好——该国政府此前为应对新型冠状病毒肺炎（COVID-19）大流行而实施了该封锁措施。本研究采用离散选择实验（discrete choice experiment）法，邀请参与者在一系列旨在放松封锁的政策场景中做出选择；这些场景并非以其政策属性（例如是否允许学校复课）为界定标准，而是依据其在七个维度上的影响进行设定。这些维度涵盖健康相关影响，以及对经济、教育与个人收入的影响。基于观测到的选择行为，本研究得以推断荷兰民众在这些政策影响之间所做出的隐性权衡。例如，本研究发现，普通民众为避免1例与COVID-19直接或间接相关的死亡病例，愿意接受18名儿童的教育表现出现长期滞后，或是77户家庭的净收入出现持续3年以上且降幅超过15%的大幅下滑。本研究借助潜类别分析（latent class analysis）法，探究了不同个体在这类权衡方面的异质性。研究结果表明，多数民众愿意在封锁措施的健康相关影响与其他影响之间进行权衡，这体现出结果主义伦理视角。颇为意外的是，本研究发现，尽管老年群体被认为感染新冠病毒的风险相对较高，但他们在为避免死亡病例而牺牲经济负担与年轻一代的教育不利影响方面，表现得相对不情愿。本研究还在相当比例的样本中发现了所谓的“禁忌权衡厌恶”现象，即厌恶接受同时意味着更高死亡人数与更低税负、存在道德争议的政策。本研究还阐释了本研究结果在COVID-19大流行及未来大流行背景下，可为政策制定者提供决策参考价值的多种路径。