Beliefs and behaviours

A new study will offer an insight into the impact of the COVID-19 crisis and lockdown on what New Zealanders' believe and how this changes over time.

A year ago, the idea of New Zealand going into a month-long self-enforced isolation, in which Kiwis give up their usual freedoms and stay at home, would have seemed an unlikely scenario.

But the global COVID-19 pandemic has brought about unprecedented government restrictions in New Zealand and worldwide as countries attempt to stop the spread of the deadly virus.

The impact of this unique period of Kiwi history – life in lockdown – is being explored by a group of Otago researchers led by Dr Damian Scarf from Otago's Department of Psychology. An in-depth survey gauges the impact of the pandemic and the restrictions that have been imposed.

Participants will be re-surveyed down the track to see if their views have changed following the lifting of restrictions.

“With New Zealanders facing extraordinary levels of restrictions and a lot of fear around the virus itself, we wanted to find out whether crises like COVID-19 change people's political beliefs and whether these changes are maintained as we go down the lockdown levels and the risk of COVID-19 decreases,” says Scarf.

“The main aim is to see how the COVID-19 crisis has influenced our political views, looking at the relationship between the support for New Zealand's major political parties and authoritarianism. Typically what we see is that people who support National are more authoritarian than people who support Labour.

“But there has been an almost reversal of the normal positions, where you had Labour instituting lockdown rules and, in contrast, we had a National Party leader suggesting lowering lockdown levels – that had some 7,000 comments from people against him.”

During Alert Level 4 (full lockdown) researchers received around 3,500 responses to the anonymous survey, which also asks a range of moral and ethical questions on topics ranging from prisons to nudist camps.

“It is important to follow these up to see how viewpoints have changed. It's possible people will remain fearful for some time after the threat decreases.”

The group received another 2,000 responses at Alert Level 3 (part lockdown) and 1,000 at Level 2. Now they plan to follow up all 6,500 participants to see how opinions have changed as lockdown measures have eased and the threat of coronavirus decreases.

“At this stage, we've found that New Zealanders across the political spectrum are in support of more authoritarian rules. This is not surprising: the survey revealed people are quite fearful of COVID-19 and this is associated with support for a strong government and strict penalties for young people breaking the strict lockdown restrictions.

“It is important to follow these up to see how viewpoints have changed. It's possible people will remain fearful for some time after the threat decreases.”

He says the insights from the study would be useful when assessing economic recovery for instance, given fearful behaviour would lead to a more cautious approach to spending habits and potentially impact views on immigration and international tourists.

Alongside this study, Scarf's team is also involved with two other COVID-19-related studies into young people's mental health – one tracking over 300 University of Otago students' mental health during lockdown and another with Youthline looking at the reasons behind the 136 per cent increase in call volumes during lockdown.

The student data are clear, he says: students' displayed a drop in mental health during the Level 4 and 3 lockdowns. The team is now following up these students to assess whether they have bounced back, displaying the resilience commonly seen among adolescents and young adults.