A Psychological Firewall? Risk Perceptions and Public Support for Online Censorship in Russia*

Introduction: People’s confidence in the health system's capability in managing the COVID-19 pandemic can determine public support, risk perceptions, and compliance to the required behaviors during the pandemic. Therefore, this paper investigated people’s perception of health system capability to manage the COVID-19 pandemic in different spatial areas across the country using data from an online survey. Methods: Multivariate logistic regression models were used to examine factors associated with people’s perception of the health system capability to manage the COVID-19 pandemic at the national and provincial levels. Spatial comparative analysis was conducted to contrast spatial density indicators of the number of hospitals, hospital beds, and ICU beds per given population across various provinces. Results: Findings showed that South Africans had low confidence in the health system capability, with only two in five (40.7%) reporting that they thought that the country’s health system was able to manage the COVID-19 pandemic. Sex and knowledge on COVID-19 were significantly associated with the people’s perception of the health system capability to manage the pandemic at the national level and in four of the nine provinces. Conclusion: Overall, the findings of this study clearly highlight challenges facing the country’s health system, both perceived or real, that needed to be addressed as part of the preparation for the COVID-19 pandemic. Timeous implementation of a countrywide National Health Insurance (NHI) system is now more critical than ever in improving healthcare outcomes of the South African population beyond the existence of the COVID-19 epidemic.

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Public support for further regulating smoking, snus and e-cigarettes in Norway, and its associations with risk perceptions and tobacco use

International Journal of Drug Policy ◽

10.1016/j.drugpo.2021.103559 ◽

2022 ◽

Vol 101 ◽

pp. 103559

Author(s):

Gunnar Sæbø ◽

Ingeborg Lund

Keyword(s):

Tobacco Use ◽

Risk Perceptions ◽

Public Support

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Flood Sensitivity, Risk Perception, and Support for Climate Action in the United States

10.33774/apsa-2021-8x1q1 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Thomas Jamieson

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Public Opinion ◽

Risk Perceptions ◽

Political Action ◽

Public Support ◽

Positive Association ◽

The United States ◽

Change Communication ◽

The Us ◽

Climate Action

Despite increasing evidence of the effects of climate change and scientific consensus about its threat, significant political barriers to climate action remain in the US. American public opinion about climate change is generally perceived as stable and sharply divided along partisan lines. However, less is known about the relationship between flood sensitivity and public opinion about climate change. Combining the ND-GAIN Urban Adaptation Assessment data of American cities with public opinion data from the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, this paper demonstrates the positive association between flood sensitivity and beliefs about climate change, risk perceptions, and support for climate action. These results have important implications for the understanding of public opinion about climate change, suggesting that flood sensitivity shapes perceptions of climate change. The results also have important implications for advocates of political action, suggesting that making flood sensitivity salient could help mobilize public support for climate action.

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Spatial analysis of perceived health system capability and actual health system capacity for COVID-19 in South Africa

10.21203/rs.3.rs-47804/v1 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Tholang Mokhele ◽

Ronel Sewpaul ◽

Sibusiso Sifunda ◽

Gina Weir-Smith ◽

Simangele Dlamini ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Health System ◽

Risk Perceptions ◽

Online Survey ◽

National Level ◽

Public Support ◽

System Capacity ◽

Health Care Outcomes ◽

Logistic Regression Models ◽

Care Outcomes ◽

System Capability

Abstract People’s confidence on the health system capability in managing COVID-19 outbreak can determine public support, risk perceptions and compliance behaviours during the pandemic. Therefore, this paper investigated people’s perception on health system capability using online survey data and current state of health system capacity to deal with COVID-19 pandemic at different spatial areas across the country. Simple and multiple logistic regression models were used to examine the factors associated with perception of the health system’s capability to manage the COVID-19 pandemic at a national level and within each province. Spatial comparative analysis was conducted on perception of health system capability and density indicators of health system capacity. Findings showed South Africans had low confidence on health system capability with only two in five (40.7%) reporting that they thought that the country’s health system was able to manage the COVID-19 pandemic. Sex and knowledge on COVID-19 were significantly associated with the perception of the health system’s capability to manage the pandemic at the national level and in four of the nine provinces. Overall, the findings of this study clearly highlights the challenges on the country’s health system both perceived or real that needed to be addressed as part of the preparation for the COVID-19 pandemic. Timeous implementation of a countrywide National Health Insurance (NHI) system is now more critical than ever in improving health care outcomes of the South African population even beyond the existence of the COVID-19 epidemic.

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Identifying the most important predictors of support for climate policy in the United States

Behavioural Public Policy ◽

10.1017/bpp.2020.39 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 1-23

Author(s):

MATTHEW H. GOLDBERG ◽

ABEL GUSTAFSON ◽

MATTHEW T. BALLEW ◽

SETH A. ROSENTHAL ◽

ANTHONY LEISEROWITZ

Keyword(s):

Global Warming ◽

Climate Policy ◽

Risk Perceptions ◽

Public Support ◽

Climate Change Policy ◽

Relative Weight ◽

The United States ◽

Policy Support ◽

The Usa ◽

Registered Voters

Abstract Reducing global warming will require enacting strong climate policies, which is unlikely to happen without public support. While prior research has identified varied predictors of climate change policy support, it is unclear which predictors are strongest for the American electorate as a whole, and which predictors are strongest for Democrats and Republicans. In a nationally representative sample of registered voters (n = 2063), we use relative weight analysis to identify the strongest predictors of public climate policy support. We find that, among registered voters in the USA, the five most important predictors of climate policy support are: worry about global warming; risk perceptions; certainty that global warming is happening; belief that global warming is human-caused; and general affect toward global warming. Collectively, these five variables account for 51% of the variance in policy support. Results split by political party indicate that pro-climate injunctive norms and global warming risk perceptions are the variables that differ most between Republicans and Democrats, accounting for significantly more variance in policy support among Republicans. These findings can inform policymakers and advocates seeking to build public support for climate action.

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