Sustaining Livelihoods or Saving Lives? Economic System Justification in the Time of COVID-19

An ongoing debate in the United States relating to COVID-19 features the purported tension between containing the coronavirus to save lives or opening the economy to sustain livelihoods, with ethical overtones on both sides. Proponents of opening the economy argue that sustaining livelihoods should...

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Veröffentlicht in:Journal of business ethics 2023-02, Vol.183 (1), p.71-104
Hauptverfasser: Jain, Shalini Sarin, Jain, Shailendra Pratap, Li, Yexin Jessica
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description An ongoing debate in the United States relating to COVID-19 features the purported tension between containing the coronavirus to save lives or opening the economy to sustain livelihoods, with ethical overtones on both sides. Proponents of opening the economy argue that sustaining livelihoods should be prioritized over virus containment, with ethicists asking, “What about the risk to human life?” Defendants of restricting the spread of the virus endorse saving lives through virus containment but contend with the ethical concern “What about people’s livelihoods and individual freedoms?” A commonly held belief is that political ideology drives these differential preferences: liberals are more focused on saving lives, whereas conservatives favor sustaining livelihoods with no additional government intervention in the free-market economy. We examine these lay beliefs among US residents in four studies and find that economic system justification (ESJ), an ideology that defends the prevailing economic system when under threat, is a reliable psychological predictor beyond political ideology. Specifically, compared to those who scored low on ESJ, people who scored high on ESJ judged China as more justified in downplaying the spread of virus to protect its interest in the global free-market economy, supported in-person over online learning, viewed shelter in place as less desirable, and perceived the opening of the Texas economy as more legitimate. We also find that multiple psychological mechanisms might be at work—resistance to market interventions, perceived legitimacy of opening the economy, perceived seriousness of the health crisis, and violation of human rights.
doi_str_mv 10.1007/s10551-022-05091-4
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subjects Business and Management
Business Ethics
Conservatism
Containment
Coronaviruses
COVID-19
Defendants
Education
Ethics
Free markets
Human rights
Ideology
Internet
Intervention
Justification
Lay conceptions
Legitimacy
Management
Market economies
Mental health
Original Paper
Philosophy
Political ideologies
Psychological mechanisms
Quality of Life Research
Residents
Seriousness
State intervention
title Sustaining Livelihoods or Saving Lives? Economic System Justification in the Time of COVID-19
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