Distributional preferences in a global pandemic: voter attitudes towards COVID-19 economic policy interventions

Chwieroth, Jeffrey ORCID: 0000-0001-8965-0621 and Walter, Andrew (2025) Distributional preferences in a global pandemic: voter attitudes towards COVID-19 economic policy interventions. European Journal for Political Research. ISSN 0304-4130

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Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic triggered a deep economic crisis that prompted governments and central banks to implement extraordinary fiscal, monetary, and financial interventions. We examine public support for these interventions using a conjoint survey experiment conducted in Australia and the United Kingdom in early 2021. Our experiment innovates by investigating public preferences across two main categories of intervention: (1) wage subsidies designed to address employment and income risks and (2) financial stabilization measures aimed at supporting the balance sheets of households, businesses, and financial institutions. Results show that wagesubsidies received robust public support across diverse social, economic, and experiential cleavages. By contrast, financial and credit market interventions elicited mixed reactions, with strongest opposition toward those benefiting large firms and banks. We argue that the variation in support is primarily driven by an alignment of fairness considerations and policy design. In both countries, wage subsidies had key design features that made them more likely to be perceived as distributionally neutral, consistent with important fairness norms, and limiting the potential for free riding. They were available to all citizens experiencing verifiable employment disruption, delivered through employers, and appealed to welfare-chauvinistic views by excluding many recent immigrants and temporary residents. Moreover, the viral origin of the economic shock was widely perceived as exogenous and quasi-random, and the associated losses – particularly those related to employment and income more readily elicited greater empathy when borne by individuals than by firms. In contrast, financial-sector interventions, especially those aiding large corporations and banks, were less easily viewed as consistent with these fairness norms. These interventions were more prone to being perceived as favoring opportunistic or politically connected firms, echoing earlier public resentment of global financial crisis bailouts. Even some household-targeted financial interventions, such as debt relief and rent holidays, likely raised concerns among respondents about undeserved gains. Unlike some existing studies, our subgroup analysis finds little evidence that personal or local pandemic experiences significantly influenced attitudes toward economic interventions. Individuals who suffered direct health or economic impacts, or who lived in areas with high infection rates or strict lockdowns, were no more or less supportive of interventions. Instead, partisan orientation and perceptions of inequality were more predictive. Left-wing partisans and those who perceived rising or high inequality were especially supportive of wage subsidies and household-focused assistance. Traditional material cleavages – such as income, education, wealth, or asset ownership – had limited explanatory power. The underbanked population was an exception, showing more muted support for all interventions, likely due to perceived exclusion or limited personal benefit. We conclude that public evaluations of economic interventions during the pandemic were shaped less by self-interest or crisis exposure than by judgments about deservingness, fairness, and partisan attachments. Our findings emphasize the importance of policy design and political framing in sustaining public support for large-scale interventions during crises, and they have broader implications for the politics of economic policy in future global shocks.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	© 2025 The Author(s)
Divisions:	International Relations
Subjects:	R Medicine > RA Public aspects of medicine > RA0421 Public health. Hygiene. Preventive Medicine J Political Science
Date Deposited:	20 Aug 2025 15:39
Last Modified:	01 Dec 2025 12:45
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/129178

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