Public acceptability of non-pharmaceutical interventions to control a pandemic in the UK: a discrete choice experiment

Abstract

To understand how individuals trade off between features of non-pharmaceutical interventions (eg, lockdowns) to control a pandemic across the four nations of the UK.

Design

A survey that included a discrete choice experiment. The survey design was informed using policy documents, social media analysis and input from remote think-aloud interviews with members of the public (n=23).

Setting

A nationwide survey across the four nations of the UK using an online panel between 29 October and 12 December 2020.

Participants

Individuals who are over 18 years old. A total of 4120 adults completed the survey (1112 in England, 848 in Northern Ireland, 1143 in Scotland and 1098 in Wales).

Primary outcome measure

Adult’s preferences for, and trade-offs between, type of lockdown restrictions, length of lockdown, postponement of routine healthcare, excess deaths, impact on the ability to buy things and unemployment.

Results

The majority of adults are willing to accept higher excess deaths if this means lockdowns that are less strict, shorter and do not postpone routine healthcare. On average, respondents in England were willing to accept a higher increase in excess deaths to have less strict lockdown restrictions introduced compared with Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales, respectively. In all four countries, one out of five respondents were willing to reduce excess deaths at all costs.

Conclusions

The majority of the UK population is willing to accept the increase in excess deaths associated with introducing less strict lockdown restrictions. The acceptability of different restriction scenarios varies according to the features of the lockdown and across countries. Governments can use information about trade-off preferences to inform the introduction of different lockdown restriction levels and design compensation policies that maximise societal welfare.

SciScore for 10.1101/2021.10.12.21264883: (What is this?)

Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

Table 1: Rigor

NIH rigor criteria are not applicable to paper type.

Table 2: Resources

No key resources detected.

Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).

Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:

Our study is not exempt from limitations. A potential limitation is that individual’s preferences regarding the features of lockdown may be evolving. Until March 2020, respondents would not have experienced a lockdown. However, we conducted our survey in October-December 2020, hence all respondents would have experience of the first lockdown. The study was, however, conducted before the second lockdown. The dynamics of preferences and trade-offs for lockdown should be closely monitored. Another possible limitation is that we identified respondents as excess death minimisers if they chose the option with the minimum number of deaths in all eight choice tasks. This response pattern could also represent a decision-heuristic for respondents to complete the tasks. It is also possible that respondents are considering excess deaths, and trading, but the combination of feature levels results in the option with the lowest number of excess deaths. Either way, this suggests our estimate of 80% of respondents being willing to trade would be an underestimate. Further, we estimated trade-offs across the entire sample, allowing for the possibility that such responders were traders. We have not attempted to explain preference heterogeneity across nor within nations. Our study did not look at the relative importance of the different dimensions of lockdown restrictions (shelter, socialising, non-essential trips, schools and youth activities, non-essential businesses and outdoor activities). Fu...

Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

Results from rtransparent:

Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
No protocol registration statement was detected.

Results from scite Reference Check: We found no unreliable references.

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