Preference Between Leadership-centered Disinfection and Cooperation-centered Disinfection by Global Citizens

1.    Background

Governments around the globe are driving social distancing, self-quarantine, personal hygiene campaigns, and introducing policies such as wearing masks in high-risk facilities, canceling a visa waiver in Jeju, and so on. These recommended and mandatory measures initiated by governments are slowing down the spread of the epidemic virus, but can the coronavirus be stopped only by these government policies and campaigns? Experts stressed the importance of citizens’ practice over the disease control, and if it were not for citizen active participation, Daegu’s fast spread of the infectious disease would have not been alleviated. In this section, we will look at how global citizens think of the role of governments and citizens in containing the epidemics.

2.    Research Topic

If a government’s leadership or citizens’ cooperation is critical to disease prevention is asked to citizens of 30 global cities. This section will explain the data analysis on this topic.

3.    Questionnaire Used

Survey Question II-3: “The options below show two divergent opinions about how to respond to the recent state of emergency. On a scale from 1-10, please identify the point you feel most closely matches your opinion. The government’s strong leadership is the main key to recover from a disaster and the citizens’ active trust and cooperation is the main key to recover from a disaster.”

The answers consist of a 10-point scale, with higher scores indicating an individual who emphasizes more on the citizens’ role and lower scores demonstrating a person who underlines a government’s leadership.

4.    Major Outcomes

Table 1: Leadership-centered Disinfection Index (LDI) and Cooperation-centered Disinfection Index (CDI)
by Citizens of 30 Global Cities

Respondents are asked to choose one score to represent their ideas on the question, and the average scores of each city indicate the Cooperation-centered Disinfection Index (CDI). Cooperation-centered Disinfection Index (CDI) demonstrates that citizens of a city consider the cooperation among them the main key to weather the disaster, and the higher the score is, the more an individual think highly of the collaboration in the society. Meanwhile, the reverse scaling was used in the Leadership-centered Disinfection Index (LDI), which means that 11 minus CDI is the Leadership-centered Disinfection Index (LDI). Similar to the CDI, the higher the LDI score is, the more a citizen highlights the leadership of a government. Finally, the numerical differences between the two scores were calculated in order to show whether a government or civil society is put more emphasis by citizens. To illustrate, the lower a numerical difference is, the more citizens of the city underline the cooperation among people to overcome the pandemic crisis.

Table 2: Average Cooperation-centered Disinfection Index (CDI) by Region

The scores in the table are the average Cooperation-centered Disinfection Index (CDI) of the global citizens by region. To be specific, the lowest score of 5.39 was rated by Oceanian citizens on average. It exhibits that people in this region tend to deem that the government’s capacity is vital at a time of crisis. On the contrary, the highest score of 6.50 was rated by Latin American citizens, which illustrates that people here highlight the most on citizenship than the government’s directorship.

Figure 1: Bar Graph of Average Cooperation-centered Disinfection Index (CDI) by Region

 

Figure 1 is the visualized graph of Table 2, and the orange line is the world average Cooperation-centered Disinfection Index (CDI). That Latin America is the most supportive of the citizen-centered disinfection is evidenced by the figure. On the other hand, Oceania shows the least enthusiasm about citizens’ mutual efforts. For further analysis, let’s see each city’s score of CDI and LDI.

Figure 2: Line Graph of Citizen-centered Disinfection Index (CDI) and Government-centered Disinfection Index (GDI)


 

This figure is a visualized version of Table 1, and the most outstanding finding of Figure 2 is that most of CDIs are higher than LDIs. It demonstrates that citizens generally regard that the citizens’ participation in disinfection is playing an important role during the state of emergency. However, citizens in Wellington think highly of the government’s role and they believe that it is easier for a country to hurdle the crisis under the good guidance of a government.

Figure 3: Bar Graph of Numerical Difference between Cooperation-centered Disinfection Index (CDI) and Leadership-centered Disinfection Index (GDI)

 

The differences between LDIs and CDIs are drawn as a bar graph, shown in Figure 3. The orange bar indicates the global average difference score (-1.15). The bigger the difference scores, the more citizens are weighing on the government leadership in the middle of the pandemic. Accordingly, since the global average is a negative number, and all cities except Wellington present negative numbers, and hence, global citizens assume that the citizens rather than governments are decisive actors during the COVID-19. Besides, citizens in Jakarta show the highest interest in citizens’ cooperation, and all cities in Latin America are accenting more on citizen’s role than the global average.

5.    Summaries and Further Tasks

a.     Generally speaking, global citizens regard the citizens’ cooperation as important during the COVID-19.

b.     Global citizens prioritize the role of citizens than rule by governments during the crisis since the numeric difference scores of Leadership-centered Disinfection Index (LDI) and Cooperation-centered Disinfection Index (CDI) are negative, except Wellington.

c.     South/Southeast Asian and Latin American average CDIs are higher than the global average, indicating these regions are more underscoring citizenship to get over the epidemic crisis.

d.     The study is limited to descriptive research, and therefore, a more detailed explanative investigation is required to further understand the global citizens’ consciousness presented above. For instance, why citizens in Wellington believe that the government’s leadership is more crucial during the crisis when other citizens reckon that citizens’ cooperation is more vital? Why people in New York are having less affection for the government’s role when Los Angeles citizens show less concern about citizens’ collaboration?