09:30 - 11:10
P1
Room: South Room 224
Panel Session 1
Daniel Goldstein - Social Norms and Voting for Democracy
Diana Rafailova - School Quality under Distinct Political Regimes: Do Autocracies Suppress Critical Thinking?
Robert Förster - Surveillance perception & Trust – Compliance behaviour in Germany during the COVID-19 pandemic
 
Surveillance perception & Trust – Compliance behaviour in Germany during the COVID-19 pandemic
P1-02
Presented by: Robert Förster
Robert Förster, Joanna J.Bryson
Hertie School
The outbreak of the coronavirus developed into a worldwide health crisis. Containing the pandemic has been a significant challenge for politics and society. It has led to the implementation of unprecedented rules and to the deployment of novel monitoring and tracking practices. To slow the spread of a pandemic, compliance with public health policies is crucial. However, little is known about the influence that the feeling of being under surveillance could have on individuals' adherence to rules in the pandemic.

Here we investigate the relationships between trust, surveillance perception and their potential impact on adherence to COVID-19 restrictions in Germany. Trust and the perception of institutional and lateral surveillance are hypothesised to positively affect self-reported compliance; here we explore the assumed relationships with a novel survey by recruiting German citizens on the crowd working platform 'Clickworker'. The survey conceptualises different dimensions of surveillance perception and collects information about trust and compliance behaviour. Contrary to the hypotheses, the results indicate a negative, not positive relationship between the perception of lateral or institutional surveillance and compliance behaviour. On the other hand, the test results about trust and compliance show a positive correlation and align with findings of other studies conducted in the context of the pandemic. In addition, the results suggest that surveillance perception and institutional trust are negatively correlated.

We speculate that our results indicate that an excess of perceived surveillance causes citizens to feel distrusted by institutions that use surveillance strategies.