QSS Scholars publish on national identity and public health

Dartmouth College Professors Yusaku Horiuchi and Charles Crabtree recently participated in a large-scale international collaboration, which published an article, "National identity predicts public health support during a global pandemic," in Nature Communications. Professor Horiuchi serves on the Steering Committee of the Program in Quantitative Social Science (QSS), and Professor Crabtree is a QSS faculty affiliate.  Both are members of Dartmouth's Department of Government and regularly teach QSS courses.  Among the article's co-authors are Kasey Rhee '21, who majored in QSS and is currently at Stanford University pursuing a doctorate in the Department of Political Science, and John Kahn '21, who double-majored in Economics and Government while at Dartmouth and is now at Innosight as an analyst.

The abstract of the article is as follows:

Changing collective behaviour and supporting non-pharmaceutical interventions is an important component in mitigating virus transmission during a pandemic. In a large international collaboration (Study 1, N = 49,968 across 67 countries), we investigated self-reported factors associated with public health behaviours (e.g., spatial distancing and stricter hygiene) and endorsed public policy interventions (e.g., closing bars and restaurants) during the early stage of the COVID-19 pandemic (April-May 2020). Respondents who reported identifying more strongly with their nation consistently reported greater engagement in public health behaviours and support for public health policies. Results were similar for representative and non-representative national samples. Study 2 (N = 42 countries) conceptually replicated the central finding using aggregate indices of national identity (obtained using the World Values Survey) and a measure of actual behaviour change during the pandemic (obtained from Google mobility reports). Higher levels of national identification prior to the pandemic predicted lower mobility during the early stage of the pandemic (r = −0.40). We discuss the potential implications of links between national identity, leadership, and public health for managing COVID-19 and future pandemics.