Government-centered Quarantine or Citizen-centered Quarantine during the COVID-19

1.    Background

This section is similar to the previous data analysis-4.5 (Leadership-centered Disinfection/Cooperation-centered Disinfection). Last section was focused on the preference on the process of containing the virus, while this section will scrutinize how global citizens render who the main actor in preventing the further spread of the disease is.

2.    Research Topic

A government is playing a vital role or citizens are more important actors when facing the COVID-19? It was asked to citizens of 30 global cities to identify who global citizens think is the main performer during the pandemic crisis. 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 is the main actor in the prevention of an epidemic and the citizens are the main actors in the prevention of an epidemic.”

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 performance.

4.    Major Outcomes

Table 1: Government-centered Quarantine Index (GQI) and Citizen-centered Quarantine Index (CQI)
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 Citizen-centered Quarantine Index (CQI). It demonstrates that citizens of a city consider citizens are main actors in containing COVID-19 epidemics, and the higher the score is, the more an individual think highly of the citizens’ role. Meanwhile, the reverse scaling was used in the Government-centered Quarantine Index (GQI), which means that 11 minus CQI is the Government-centered Quarantine Index (GQI). Similarly, the higher the GQI score is, the more a citizen highlights a government’s participation. Finally, the numerical differences between the two scores were calculated in order to show which side a city is putting more significance. 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 Citizen-centered Quarantine Index (CQI) by Region

The scores in the table are the average Citizen-centered Quarantine Index (CQI) of the global citizens by region. To be specific, the lowest score of 5.76 was rated by East Asian citizens on average. It exhibits that people in this region tend to deem that the government is the main player at a time of crisis. On the contrary, the highest score of 6.57 was rated by Latin American citizens, which illustrates that people here highlight the most on citizens’ performance.

Figure 1: Bar Graph of Average Citizen-centered Quarantine Index (CQI) by Region

 

Figure 1 is the visualized graph of Table 2, and the orange line is the world average Citizen-centered Quarantine Index (CQI). That South/Southeast Asian citizens think highly of the citizens’ role is evidenced by the figure. Moreover, South/Southeast Asia is the only region that its average CQI is higher than the global average. On the other hand, Oceania least likely to appreciate the role of citizens. For further detailed analysis, let’s see each city’s score of CQI and GQI.

Figure 2: Line Graph of Government-centered Quarantine Index (GQI) and Citizen-centered Quarantine Index (CQI)
 

This figure is a visualized version of Table 1, and the most outstanding finding of Figure 2 is that most of CQIs are higher than GQIs, except Seoul, Daegu, Tokyo, and Osaka. It demonstrates that citizens generally regard that the citizens’ participation facing COVID-19 is playing an important role. However, citizens in South Korea and Japan think highly of the government’s role at the state of emergency.

Figure 3: Bar Graph of Numerical Difference between Government-centered Quarantine Index (GQI) and Citizen-centered Quarantine Index (CQI)

 

The differences between GQIs and CQIs are drawn as a bar graph, shown in Figure 3. The orange bar indicates the global average difference score (-1.09). The negative number of the global average difference score signifies that citizens in the world largely concluded that citizens are the main role-players in the course of the disaster recovery. Furthermore, the smaller the difference scores are, the more citizens are appreciating the citizens’ participation in the middle of the pandemic. Nonetheless, people in South Korea and Japan, represented by Seoul, Daegu, Tokyo, and Osaka responded the opposite to the other parts of the people. Besides, citizens in Mexico City show the highest interest in citizens’ role, followed by Cape Town, Jakarta, São Paulo, Santiago, and Hong Kong.

5.    Summaries and Further Tasks

a.     Generally speaking, global citizens reckon that the citizens are the main actors in the disaster recovery.

b.     Global citizens prioritize the role of citizens than rule by governments during the crisis since the numeric difference scores of Government-centered Quarantine Index (GQI) and Citizen-centered Quarantine Index (CQI) are negative, except Seoul, Daegu, Tokyo, and Osaka.

c.     South/Southeast Asian and Latin American average CQIs are higher than the global average, indicating these regions are more acknowledging the citizens’ role facing the 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 South Korea and Japan believe that the government is the main performer while others do not?