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Effective states govern by some combination of enforcement and voluntary compliance. To contain the COVID-19 pandemic, a critical decision is the extent to which policy makers rely on voluntary as opposed to enforced compliance, and nations vary along this dimension. While enforcement may secure higher compliance, there is experimental and other evidence that it may also crowd out voluntary motivation. How does enforcement affect citizens' support for anti–COVID-19 policies? A survey conducted with 4,799 respondents toward the end of the first lockdown in Germany suggests that a substantial share of the population will support measures more under voluntary than under enforced implementation. Negative responses to enforcement—termed control aversion—vary across the nature of the policy intervention (e.g., they are rare for masks and frequent for vaccination and a cell-phone tracing app). Control aversion is less common among those with greater trust in the government and the information it provides, and among those who were brought up under the coercive regime of East Germany. Taking account of the likely effectiveness of enforcement and the extent to which near-universal compliance is crucial, the differing degrees of opposition to enforcement across policies suggest that for some anti–COVID-19 policies an enforced mandate would be unwise, while for others it would be essential. Similar reasoning may also be relevant for policies to address future pandemics and other societal challenges like climate change.

Die Nutzung von persönlichen Daten der Bürger:innen bietet enormes Potential für die Bewältigung gesellschaftlicher Herausforderungen. Doch das Thema wird kontrovers diskutiert - von Corona-Apps und Bewegungsdaten bis hin zur Vorratsdatenspeicherung. Datenschutz hat in Deutschland einen sehr hohen Stellenwert, doch unsere repräsentative Befragung zeigt: Wenn auf Freiwilligkeit statt auf Zwang gesetzt wird, ist die Bevölkerung eher bereit, Daten zur Verfügung zu stellen. Die Datennutzung sollte daher die informationelle Selbstbestimmtheit der Bürger:innen achten und für sie oder andere einen konkreten Nutzen erkennen lassen. Neben diesen Faktoren ist das Vertrauen in öffentliche Institutionen zentral, um breite Zustimmung zur Nutzung persönlicher Daten zu gewährleisten - in Krisenzeiten und darüber hinaus. ; Making use of citizens' data might be an essential tool for overcoming social challenges. Nevertheless, the use of data, be it with respect to the COVID-19 crisis or data retention, remains a controversial topic. While the German public values its high standards for data protection our survey indicates that the public is willing to hand over data as long as doing so remains a voluntary choice. Hence, to facilitate the transmission of data between the government and its citizens it is important that citizens retain a freedom of choice. Additionally, increasing the level of trust in public institutions and signaling the benefits from data use also positively increase citizens' opinions on governmental data use.

How does enforcement affect citizens' support for anti-Covid-19 policies? A survey conducted with 4,799 respondents towards the end of the first lockdown in Germany suggests that a substantial share of the population will support measures more under voluntary than under enforced implementation. Negative responses to enforcement – termed control aversion – vary across the nature of the policy intervention (e.g. they are rare for masks and frequent for vaccination and a cell phone tracing app) and are less common among those with greater trust in the government and the information it provides, and among those who were brought up under the coercive regime of East Germany.



This data set provides the data and Stata code used for the article. A detailed description of the variables is available from the corresponding publication. Please cite my paper if you use the data.

Do politico-economic systems influence how control affects motivation? We hypothesize that control aversion, meaning crowding-out of intrinsic motivation due to enforcement, has evolved less under the coercive regime of East Germany than under the liberal regime of West Germany. We test this hypothesis in a large-scale internet study with subjects of different generations. The core of our study is a repeated principal-agent game where the principal can control the agent by implementing a minimal effort requirement before the agent chooses an effort costly to her but beneficial to the principal. We find that control aversion is largely stronger among West than among East Germans. The differences are significant and systematic for older Germans of the working population, never for younger Germans of the working population, and only in specific cases for students. Our findings suggest that for East Germans who have been socialized under a coercive regime, the experience of a liberal regime does not make them abandon completely the control-related preferences they have acquired earlier. Differences in reactions to control are vanishing in younger generations who essentially grew up in reunified Germany. More control aversion in the West is driven by more frequent control averse choices, while the strength of reactions to control is similar in both parts of Germany. Surprisingly, intrinsic motivation in the absence of control is very similar among East and West Germans. Our data suggest that control preferences are affected by the nature of the politico-economic system. However, this effect is only short-lived.

COVID-19 vaccination rates slowed in many countries during the second half of 2021, along with the emergence of vocal opposition, particularly to mandated vaccinations. Who are those resisting vaccination? Under what conditions do they change their minds? Our 3-wave representative panel survey from Germany allows us to estimate the dynamics of vaccine opposition, providing the following answers. Without mandates it may be difficult to reach and to sustain the near universal level of repeated vaccinations apparently required to contain the Delta, Omicron and likely subsequent variants. But mandates substantially increase opposition to vaccination. We find that few were opposed to voluntary vaccination in all three waves of the survey. They are just 3.3 percent of our panel, a number that we demonstrate is unlikely to be the result of response error. In contrast, the fraction consistently opposed to enforced vaccinations is 16.5 percent. Under both policies, those consistently opposed and those switching from opposition to supporting vaccination are socio-demographically virtually indistinguishable from other Germans. Thus, the mechanisms accounting for the dynamics of vaccine attitudes may apply generally across societal groups. What differentiates them from others are their beliefs about vaccination effectiveness, trust in public institutions, and whether they perceive enforced vaccination as a restriction on their freedom. We find that changing these beliefs is both possible and necessary to increase vaccine willingness, even in the case of mandates. An inference is that well-designed policies of persuasion and enforcement will be complementary, not alternatives.



This data set provides the data and Stata code used for the article. A detailed description of the variables is available from the corresponding publication. Please cite our paper if you use the data.

What is an effective vaccination policy to end the COVID-19 pandemic? We address this question in a model of the dynamics of policy effectiveness drawing upon the results of a large panel survey implemented in Germany during the first and second waves of the pandemic. We observe increased opposition to vaccinations were they to be legally required. In contrast, for voluntary vaccinations, there was higher and undiminished support. We find that public distrust undermines vaccine acceptance, apparently because it is associated with a belief that the vaccine is ineffective and, if enforced, compromises individual freedom. We model how the willingness to be vaccinated may vary over time in response to the fraction of the population already vaccinated and whether vaccination has occurred voluntarily or not. A negative effect of enforcement on vaccine acceptance (of the magnitude observed in our panel or even considerably smaller) could result in a large increase in the numbers that would have to be vaccinated unwillingly in order to reach a herd-immunity target. Costly errors may be avoided if policy makers understand that citizens' preferences are not fixed but will be affected both by the crowding-out effect of enforcement and by conformism.



This data set provides the data and Stata code used for the article. A detailed description of the variables is available from the corresponding publication. Please cite our paper if you use the data.

To develop a better understanding of how people in Germany handle the social and political consequences of the Corona (COVID-19) crisis, the Cluster of Excellence "The Politics of Inequality" has installed a surveys program with the participation of researchers from several different departments and disciplines at the University of Konstanz (Sociology, Political Science, Economics and Psychology).

The surveys focus on the social and political consequences of the Corona crisis and cover multiple topics, such as the perceived individual and social consequences of the pandemic and the measures taken to contain it, trust in health and social policy and the welfare state, support for government aid given to businesses, gender inequalities, questions of solidarity within the EU, opinions on the "Corona app", on debates on loosening the emergency measures, and on perceived infection risks in the working place.

The survey program took the form of several online surveys conducted in 2020, 2021 and 2022. The surveys were organized in two series, Survey A and B. For each series, three cross-sectional surveys were conducted that included a sample of respondents who were surveyed repeatedly. This dataset is the survey that took place in May 2021. It is the third Wave of Survey A.

The other surveys can also be found in the GESIS repository (https://doi.org/10.7802/2116 , https://doi.org/10.7802/2118 , https://doi.org/10.7802/2334 , https://doi.org/10.7802/2335).

To develop a better understanding how people in Germany handle the social and political consequences of the Corona (COVID-19) crisis, the Cluster of Excellence "The Politics of Inequality" has installed a surveys program with the participation of researchers from several different departments and disciplines at the University of Konstanz (Sociology, Political Science, Economics and Psychology).

The surveys focus on the social and political consequences of the Corona crisis and cover multiple topics, such as the perceived individual and social consequences of the pandemic and the measures taken to contain it, trust in health and social policy and the welfare state, support for government aid given to businesses, gender inequalities, questions of solidarity within the EU, opinions on the "Corona app", on debates on loosening the emergency measures, and on perceived infection risks in the working place.

The survey program took the form of several online surveys conducted in 2020 and 2021. The surveys were organized in two series, Survey A and B. For each serie, three cross-sectional surveys werde conducted that included a sample of respondents who where surveyed repeatedly.

This dataset is the survey that took place in November 2020. It is the second Wave of Survey A.



The other surveys can also be found in the GESIS repository (https://doi.org/10.7802/2116 , https://doi.org/10.7802/2118)

To develop a better understanding how people in Germany handle the social and political consequences of the Corona (COVID-19) crisis, the Cluster of Excellence "The Politics of Inequality" has installed a surveys program with the participation of researchers from several different departments and disciplines at the University of Konstanz (Sociology, Political Science, Economics and Psychology).

The surveys focus on the social and political consequences of the Corona crisis and cover multiple topics, such as the perceived individual and social consequences of the pandemic and the measures taken to contain it, trust in health and social policy and the welfare state, support for government aid given to businesses, gender inequalities, questions of solidarity within the EU, opinions on the "Corona app", on debates on loosening the emergency measures, and on perceived infection risks in the working place.

The survey program took the form of several online surveys conducted in 2020 and 2021. The surveys were organized in two series, Survey A and B. For each serie, three cross-sectional surveys werde conducted that included a sample of respondents who where surveyed repeatedly. This dataset is the survey that took place in November 2020. It is the second Wave of Survey B.



The other surveys can also be found in the GESIS repository (https://doi.org/10.7802/2116 , https://doi.org/10.7802/2118 , https://doi.org/10.7802/2334).

To develop a better understanding how people in Germany handle the social and political consequences of the Corona crisis, the Cluster of Excellence "The Politics of Inequality" has installed a surveys program with the participation of researchers from several different departments and disciplines at the University of Konstanz (Sociology, Political Science, Economics and Psychology).
The surveys focus on the social and political consequences of the Corona crisis and cover multiple topics, such as the perceived individual and social consequences of the pandemic and the measures taken to contain it, trust in health and social policy and the welfare state, support for government aid given to businesses, gender inequalities, questions of solidarity within the EU, opinions on the "Corona app", on debates on loosening the emergency measures, and on perceived infection risks in the working place.
The survey program took the form of several online surveys conducted in 2020. This dataset is the survey that took place in May 2020. The other survey can also be found in the GESIS repository (https://doi.org/10.7802/2116).
The second wave of this study is available at https://doi.org/10.7802/2335 .

To develop a better understanding how people in Germany handle the social and political consequences of the Corona (COVID-19) crisis, the Cluster of Excellence "The Politics of Inequality" has installed a surveys program with the participation of researchers from several different departments and disciplines at the University of Konstanz (Sociology, Political Science, Economics and Psychology).
The surveys focus on the social and political consequences of the Corona crisis and cover multiple topics, such as the perceived individual and social consequences of the pandemic and the measures taken to contain it, trust in health and social policy and the welfare state, support for government aid given to businesses, gender inequalities, questions of solidarity within the EU, opinions on the "Corona app", on debates on loosening the emergency measures, and on perceived infection risks in the working place.
The survey program took the form of several online surveys conducted in 2020. This dataset is the survey that took place in April 2020. The other survey and the second wave of this survey can also be found in the GESIS repository (https://doi.org/10.7802/2118 , https://doi.org/10.7802/2334).