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An integrated view on society readiness and initial reaction to COVID-19: a study across European countries
[journal article]
Abstract With the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the question of society’s capability to deal with an acute health crisis is, once again, brought to the forefront. In the core is the need to broaden the perspective on the determinants of a country’s ability to cope with the spread of the virus. This paper is... view more
With the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the question of society’s capability to deal with an acute health crisis is, once again, brought to the forefront. In the core is the need to broaden the perspective on the determinants of a country’s ability to cope with the spread of the virus. This paper is about bringing together diverse aspects of readiness and initial reaction to a COVID-19 outbreak. We proposed an integrated evaluation framework which encapsulates six dimensions of readiness and initial reaction. Using a specific multi-level outranking method, we analysed how these dimensions affect the relative positioning of European countries in the early stages of the COVID-19 outbreak. The results revealed that the order of countries based on our six-dimensional assessment framework is significantly reminiscent of the actual positioning of countries in terms of COVID-19 morbidity and mortality in the initial phase of the pandemic. Our findings confirm that only when a country’s readiness is complemented by an appropriate societal reaction we can expect a less severe outcome. Moreover, our study revealed different patterns of performance between former communist Eastern European and Western European countries.... view less
Keywords
perception; Europe; Western Europe; Eastern Europe; disposition; epidemic; society; social effects; social behavior
Classification
General Sociology, Basic Research, General Concepts and History of Sociology, Sociological Theories
Free Keywords
ZA7500: European Values Study 2017: Integrated Dataset (EVS 2017); COVID-19; Coronavirus
Document language
English
Publication Year
2020
Page/Pages
p. 1-21
Journal
PLOS ONE, 15 (2020) 11
ISSN
1932-6203
Status
Published Version; peer reviewed