Civic capital

Leaving the house or not in the midst of the pandemic is a decision similar to that of cooperating or not for the production of a public good. Just as to enjoy public services - such as, for example, security - it is necessary to pay taxes and therefore cooperate to support the costs, also to protect the health of citizens and not overload the health system, everyone must cooperate to limit contagion, bearing the personal costs associated with limiting their mobility. If only one person did not do it, he would certainly enjoy the reduction of the contagion resulting from the sacrifice of others, but would seriously jeopardize the collective health, nullifying the efforts of those who, instead, chose to cooperate by staying at home. This situation is similar to that of "free riding" which often occurs when, for example, you do not pay the ticket on the bus or, more generally, you do not pay the taxes associated with the use of any other service public utility.

Communities unwilling to cooperate are communities where it is often difficult to implement projects, policies and infrastructures aimed at the collective benefit.
Excluding cases in which mobility is not a choice entirely dependent on the free will of the individual (such as those who worked in logistics during the pandemic), the decision as to whether and how much to limit one's movements may "partly" depend from the civic sense of those who want to respect social distancing to avoid infecting others. I emphasize "in part", because there is also another (legitimate) motivation - perhaps more individualistic - in the choice to stay at home: to avoid being infected.

The first reason, that is the one strictly oriented to the common good, can be a function of the level of "civic capital" of a specific area: with the same number of infections and deaths, in a city there can be more or less mobility depending citizens are willing to give up an immediate private benefit (eg going to the bar) for a collective benefit (reduction of infections). This is the hypothesis tested in a recent scientific article aimed at studying how civic capital affects the level of adherence to social distancing in Italy.

Through the data on the mobility of the Italian provinces between January and May 2020 obtained through mobile phone geolocation, the authors analyze how mobility has changed before and after some important dates in the evolution of the virus and policies aimed at limiting the contagion, also comparing provinces high and low civic capital. The latter characteristic was measured by aggregating data on trust, blood donations and the circulation of newspapers at the provincial level. The results show that the social distancing was voluntarily respected as early as February 21, when the news of the first case of Covid-19 in Codogno spread. Mobility is then drastically reduced, starting from 9 March, the date of the official start of the lockdown.

Regarding the differences between provinces with more or less civic capital, the authors show that with the same spread of the virus and other economic and social characteristics, the reduction in mobility was greater in the provinces with higher civic capital. It is important to emphasize that this differentiation does not necessarily reflect the classic north-south division in terms of both social capital and the spread of the virus, as both of these variables are taken into account and "neutralized" in the statistical analysis conducted by the authors.

It would therefore seem that Italians have reduced their mobility first in response to information on the presence of the virus in the country and then (further) in reaction to social distancing when this was made mandatory throughout the country. Both of these reactions were stronger in communities with high civic capital, because according to the authors, individuals with higher civic sense are more likely to respect the new rules and more aware of the fact that their mobility choices may have an impact on the other people's well-being.

Pierluigi Conzo
NP August / September 2020