Attitudes towards lockdown, trust in institutions, and civic engagement: A study on Sicilians during the coronavirus lockdown

• Published date: 01 December 2022
• Author: Graziella Di Marco,Zira Hichy,Federica Sciacca
• Date: 01 December 2022
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/pa.2739

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Attitudes towards lockdown, trust in institutions, and

civic engagement: A study on Sicilians during the

coronavirus lockdown

Graziella Di Marco | Zira Hichy | Federica Sciacca

Department of Educational Sciences,

University of Catania, Catania, Italy

Correspondence

Graziella Di Marco, Department of Educational

Sciences, University of Catania, Catania, Italy.

Email: grazia.dimarco@unict.it

Italy was the first European country to be affected by the Covid-19. To limit the

contagion, an emergency protocol was triggered on March 10, 2020, which imposed

a lockdown for 69 days. Many Italians considered the restrictions imposed by the

government excessive and unnecessary. We hypothesized that agreement with gov-

ernment restrictions and compliance with imposed rules was positively correlated

with trust in institutions, civic engagement, and the sense of community. To this end,

during the lockdown period, we administered an online questionnaire to 189 Sicilians.

The results showed that trust in institutional organizations and the attitude compo-

nent of civic engagement facilitate the approval of limitations imposed during the

lockdown period and the acceptance of future restrictions. Unexpectedly, the

behavioral component of civic engagement leads to the rejection of restrictions and

behaviors that could contain a further spread of the virus. Indeed, participants who

declared that they were engaged in beneficial actions for their community dis-

approved of the measures already adopted and were unwilling to adopt future

behaviors to limit the spread of the virus.

KEYWORDS

civic engagement, sense of community, social capital, trust in institutions

1|INTRODUCTION

On 12 February 2020, the first case of Covid-19 was officially

diagnosed in Italy, and only one day later, an older man died of the

virus. In a few days, the number of infections increased, and Italy

became the first Western country to manage the Covid-19 pandemic.

The government decided on an emergency protocol that, from

10 March to 18 May, imposed restrictions on free movement and the

closure of almost all production activities. During the Covid-19 emer-

gency Italians' confidence in the government and the health system

grew (Scavo, 2020). Altruistic behaviors have also increased; indeed,

donations to the health system increased by about 30% compared to

previous years: more than 10 million Italians declared they had given

money at the beginning of the pandemic emergency and many others

declared their intention to do it soon (Castiglioni & Lozza, 2020).

During the lockdown period, most citizens observed the rules and

expressed solidarity behaviors; however, some behavior aimed to

challenge the rules decided by the authorities to protect public health

emerged. On social networks, more and more skeptics expressed dis-

trust of government decisions and contested the warnings of experts

and the information disseminated by the mass media about the sever-

ity of the virus and the number of deaths. One study found that peo-

ple who are less careful about protecting their health tend to have

less trust in health institutions and scientists' prescriptions and are

Received: 23 February 2021 Revised: 10 June 2021 Accepted: 30 July 2021

DOI: 10.1002/pa.2739

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any

medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.

© 2021 The Authors. Journal of Public Affairs published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

J Public Affairs. 2022;22(Suppl. 1):e2739. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/pa 1of10

https://doi.org/10.1002/pa.2739