What factors drive the satisfaction of citizens with governments' responses to COVID-19?

Objectives: This research scrutinizes the important factors influencing the satisfaction of citizens concerning their governments' responses to the COVID-19 pandemic based on an open-sourced survey of 14 countries.

Methods: To collect information on public sentiment regarding governments' reactions to COVID-19, we consider five factors for analysis: number of confirmed cases per million population, number of deaths per million population, and governments' containment and health policies, stringency policies, and economic support policies. We examine the Kendall correlations of variables in the 14 countries and use the wild bootstrap method for regression models to find important regressors.

Results: Our results show that people pay stronger attention to the results of their governments' battle against COVID-19 (number of confirmed cases and deaths per million population) rather than to what policies they initiate. Health policy and economic support do influence the approval of any national response to COVID-19. We also find that public satisfaction in Japan and South Korea toward the two governments' responses to the pandemic varies greatly compared to that of other countries' citizens to their governments' responses.

Conclusions: The results herein offer some suggestions to governments when initiating policies to balance public health, livelihoods, and economic support.