Government policies, national culture and social distancing during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic: International evidence

We assess the impact of national culture and government policies on social distancing to fight COVID-19 across major economies during the first wave of the pandemic. To do so, we regress government stringency index from Oxford COVID-19 government response tracker together with Hofstede’s national culture scores on social distancing data from Google mobility reports. We find that government stringency has a far larger impact on social distancing than national culture. Social distancing increases with government stringency. We find two cultural dimensions matter: social distancing decreases with ‘Long-term Orientation’; the opposite is true for ‘Indulgence’. Our results convey that policymakers must act decisively rather than blaming the culture.