COVID-19 Preventive Policy Preferences and Households Self-Reported Preventive Behaviors During the Pandemic: Evidence from Burkina Faso

This study proposes two novel indices of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) against Covid-19, characterizing respectively household level self-directed voluntary and government-directed mandatory policy preferences; followed by a spatial analysis of their distributional properties across various sub-national levels, and the predictive modelling of their relationships with actual preventive behaviors. To this end, the study uses data on a cross-section of 1972 households from the 3rd wave of the 2020 Burkina Faso Covid-19 High Frequency Phone Survey, collected by its National Institute of Statistics and Demography, between September 12 and October 21, 2020. The findings revealed the significance of the two proposed indices for decentralized, socially sensitive policy making. With its statistically significant correlation coefficients, the multivariate probabilistic modelling showcased important household level's inter-dependence in adherence to NPIs across the considered preventive measures. Most importantly, it transpired that actual preventive behaviors are better motivated through self-directed voluntary measures, than government directed mandatory measures, as the latter is observed to reduce the likelihood of adherence to NPIs, while the former is seen to increase this likelihood. The findings also highlighted significant income based gradient in adherence behaviors, with the households identified above the official poverty threshold showing more adherence than those below the poverty line. On the other hand, social protection programs including food assistance, direct cash transfers, and other in-kind-transfers were all found to significantly increase the likelihood of adhering to NPIs. Since NPIs are the primary defense line during the early stages of a novel disease outbreak, when scientific knowledge is limited, and medical interventions are scarce, understanding society's preferences for NPIs provide insights for socially sensitive, preventive policy making.