Austrian Corona Panel

Fakultät für Sozialwissenschaften Vienna Center for Electoral Research Austrian Corona Panel Project coronapanel2020@univie.ac.at http://viecer.univie.ac.at/coronapanel Austrian Corona Panel: Individual Perspectives during and after the SARS-CoV-2 Crisis Bernhard Kittel (Speaker), Sylvia Kritzinger, Hajo Boomgaarden, Barbara Prainsack The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has changed everyday life in Austria as in many other countries. The project studies how different people are affected by the health crisis and its economic and societal repercussions and how the crisis impacts on attitudes, opinions, communication styles and behaviours. How do people deal with the threat to their health and economic status? What do people think about containment policies and what do they think about the measures to overcome the economic crisis? How does the crisis influence thinking about democracy and the constitutional state? In what way does the crisis affect peoples communication behaviour and strategies of information collection? Which consequences does the crisis have for social relationships? The project continues an online panel survey with 1500 respondents initiated in March 2020 by a grant from the Vienna Science and Technology Fund (WWTF) and focuses in particular on the longer-term implications of the crisis. In this way, the immediate crisis situation can be connected with later effects and it will be possible to draw conclusions about the potential effects of containment measures in future crises.

The Austrian Corona Panel Project (ACPP) generated an open-access database for analyzing the societal consequences of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. The database contains 34 waves, fielded between March 2020 and February 2023, based on an online panel survey with more than 3000 respondents, representative of the Austrian population. It provides a solid base for the scientific assessment of societal developments during a health crisis. As such, the database has contributed to academic advances, public debate, and political decision-making. The questionnaire contains a broad set of items covering perceptions, emotional reactions, fundamental attitudes, situational preferences, and behavior in relation to health, economic impact including the labor market, social conditions, psychological conseque nces, political attitudes, and communication behavior. The most important contribution lies in the richness of the data collected in this project. The panel structure allows for the analysis of both societal trends and individual developments. The data, therefore, holds the potential for numerous studies of societal processes in different subgroups over time. The data provides unique insights into societal developments during the Sars-Cov-2 health crisis from the first lockdown until the fading out of measures to contain the crisis three years later. So far, studies based on ACPP data have covered a broad range of research questions. For example, it was shown that social norms led people, who did not feel threatened by the virus to adhere to preventive measures, while vice versa, people who felt threatened by the virus reduced their efforts to prevent infection in social contexts when others did not respect social norms in relation to preventing the spread of the virus. A study of the determinants of vaccine hesitancy during the pandemic identified the lack of sense of community and the politicization of vaccination through conspiracy myths and party politics as decisive factors. Trust in government has deteriorated over the course of the pandemic. The initial rally-round-the-flag effect of the crisis faded as the perceived threat declined and the societal consensus about adequate preventive measures turned into increasingly polarized political contestation. Social media was shown to produce substantial perception biases which contributed to a rise in populist attitudes and COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs. The database provides fruitful ground for many more studies to come. The project was involved in public debate as well as political decision -making. Due to the high frequency of data collection waves, ACPP responded quickly to ongoing developments during the pandemic. The Corona Blog covered important findings of each wave in short summaries, which was an important source for newspapers and broadcasting stations as well as ministries and interest associations. Moreover, ACPP was involved in commissions advising policymakers. In sum, it was an impactful project which contributed to scientific advancement and societal well-being alike.