COVID-19 and public support for development assistance

The COVID-19 pandemic poses a global health, economic and political threat for developed and developing countries alike. However, the latter are less well prepared. Tackling the pandemic and its effects requires global cooperation and the provision of development assistance to countries in need. Yet, support for development assistance among donor publics might be dampened by individual health-related and economic worries as well as decreasing trust in government during the pandemic. Against this backdrop, we investigate the effect of pandemic-induced worries on public support for providing assistance to developing countries as well as the moderating role of moral considerations and trust in government. Drawing on the aid attitudes and welfare state support literature and based on survey data for Germany provided by the COVID-19 Snapshot Monitoring (COSMO) project collected in April 2020 (N = 1,012), our regression models show that on average neither health-related nor economic worries go along with less support for providing assistance to developing countries affected by the pandemic. However, we find a significant interaction between health-related worries and trust in government: For those with high levels of trust in government the effect of healthrelated worry on support for development assistance is positive, whereas it is negative for those with low levels of trust. We conclude that for the moment there is no need for concern as neither form of worry correlates negatively with support for development assistance. However, garnering support for global solidarity remains an important task for policy-makers in developed countries. When the epicenter of the pandemic moves to the developing world and at the same time the consequences of the lockdowns become manifest in donor countries and trust in government decreases, public support for global solidarity may wane.

In a crisis such as the current outbreak of the newly emerged coronavirus, it is of utmost importance to monitor public perceptions of risk, protective and preparedness behaviours, public trust, as well as knowledge and misinformation to enable government spokespeople, the media, and health organizations to implement adequate responses (WHO Europe, 2017; World Health Organization, 2017). The purpose of this serial cross-sectional study COSMO is to allow rapid and adaptive monitoring of these variables over time and to assess the relations between risk perceptions, knowledge and misinformation to preparedness and protective behaviour regarding COVID-19 in Germany.

In a crisis such as the current outbreak of the newly emerged coronavirus, it is of utmost importance to monitor public perceptions of risk, protective and preparedness behaviours, public trust, as well as knowledge and misinformation to enable government spokespeople, the media, and health organizations to implement adequate responses (WHO Europe, 2017; World Health Organization, 2017). The purpose of this serial cross-sectional study COSMO is to allow rapid and adaptive monitoring of these variables over time and to assess the relations between risk perceptions, knowledge and misinformation to preparedness and protective behaviour regarding COVID-19 in Germany.