Curtailment of Civil Liberties and Subjective Life Satisfaction

This analysis focuses on the lockdown measures in the context of the Covid-19 crisis in Spring 2020 in Germany. In a randomized survey experiment, respondents were asked to evaluate their current life satisfaction after being provided with varying degrees of information about the lethality of Covid-19. We use reactance as a measure of the intensity of a preference for freedom to explain the variation in the observed subjective life satisfaction loss. Our results suggest that it is not high reactance alone that is associated with large losses of life satisfaction due to the curtailment of liberties. The satisfaction loss occurs in particular in combination with receiving information about the (previously overestimated) lethality of Covid-19. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10902-021-00491-1.


Factor analysis to obtain an index for psychological reactance
We use 14 questions designed to elicit psychological reactance (see Hong and Page (1989)). The 14 questions we used were asked as follows in our questionnaire (see Section 5 for the full questionnaire): To what extent do you agree with the following statements? R1: Regulations trigger a sense of resistance in me. (Strongly agree -Agree more or less -Neither agree nor disagree -Rather not agree -Do not agree at all) R2: I find contradicting others stimulating. (Strongly agree -Agree more or less -Neither agree nor disagree -Rather not agree -Do not agree at all) R3: When something is prohibited, I usually think, "That's exactly what I am going to do". (Strongly agree -Agree more or less -Neither agree nor disagree -Rather not agree -Do not agree at all) R4: The thought of being dependent on others aggravates me. (Strongly agree -Agree more or less -Neither agree nor disagree -Rather not agree -Do not agree at all) R5: I consider advice from others to be an intrusion. (Strongly agree -Agree more or less -Neither agree nor disagree -Rather not agree -Do not agree at all) R6: I become frustrated when I am unable to make free and independent decisions. (Strongly agree -Agree more or less -Neither agree nor disagree -Rather not agree -Do not agree at all) R7: It irritates me when someone points out things which are obvious to me. (Strongly agree -Agree more or less -Neither agree nor disagree -Rather not agree -Do not agree at all) R8: I become angry when my freedom of choice is restricted. (Strongly agree -Agree more or less -Neither agree nor disagree -Rather not agree -Do not agree at all) R9: Advice and recommendations usually induce me to do just the opposite. (Strongly agree -Agree more or less -Neither agree nor disagree -Rather not agree -Do not agree at all) R10: I am contended only when I am acting of my own free will. (Strongly agree -Agree more or less -Neither agree nor disagree -Rather not agree -Do not agree at all) R11: I resist the attempts of others to influence me. (Strongly agree -Agree more or less -Neither agree nor disagree -Rather not agree -Do not agree at all) R12: It makes me angry when another person is held up as a role model for me to follow. (Strongly agree -Agree more or less -Neither agree nor disagree -Rather not agree -Do not agree at all) R13: When someone forces me to do something, I feel like doing the opposite.
(Strongly agree -Agree more or less -Neither agree nor disagree -Rather not agree -Do not agree at all) R14: It disappoints me to see others submitting to society's standards and rules.
(Strongly agree -Agree more or less -Neither agree nor disagree -Rather not agree -Do not agree at all) We perform a standard exploratory factor analysis. Five factors with positive Eigenvalues were identified. The most commonly used method to decide how many factors to retain from factor analysis is the Kaiser criterion, which recommends retaining all factors with Eigenvalues greater than 1 (and only those), as any additional factors corresponding to smaller Eigenvalues would only account for trivial variance (see Kaiser (1960)). From Table 1 we can see that only one factor emerges with corresponding Eigenvalue larger than unity. We thus decided to retain a single factor to capture reactance. This factor accounts for more than 90% of the total variance in all the variables. The factor loadings for this factor are given in Table 2.

Factor analysis to obtain an index for Locus of Control
We use four questions designed to elicit locus of control (see Kovaleva et al., 2012) to conduct an exploratory factor analysis. We find one factor with Eigenvalue larger than 1 (see Table 3) and thus retain one factor to capture locus of control (see Kaiser (1960)). The factor loadings are given by Table 4. The four questions we used were asked as follows in our questionnaire (see Section 5 for the full questionnaire): The following statements may more or less apply to you. For each statement, please include to what extent this applies to you personally:     (3) and (4) the split sample regressions looking at each treatment group separately, and (5) is the regression over the whole sample including interactions between treatment group and reactance.
(1)  No information about lethality was provided in T 0 . In T 2 participants were not informed about average lethality either, but they were informed about lethality rates by age group in the Wuhan area (ranging from 0.2% for the young to 14.8% for people over 80).

6 Information treatments
We randomly assigned the respondents to one of three information treatments. To provide a clear baseline, we included a "neutral treatment" T 0 in which respondents read a neutral sentence only referring to the fact that the government introduced measures to combat the spread of Covid-19. The other treatments (also include that sentence and) vary whether respondents were informed about: • the average estimated lethality rate of Covid-19 (T 1 ), • the lethality by age group, indicating a clear increase of fatalities for higher age groups (T 2 ), The experimental information was conveyed to the respondents by means of video clips which they visualized in the course of the survey. Stills of the clips are provided in Figures 3 to 5 (English translation below each still).
Each of the videos began with a statement referring to the fact that the government introduced measures to combat the spread of Covid-19. Only the video for the baseline treatment then continued immediately with an invitation for the respondent to proceed with the survey. The other videos informed our respondents of the estimated lethality rate of Covid-19 as described above.
Treatment 0 The information provided in Treatment T 0 only generically referred to the fact that the government introduced measures to combat the spread of Covid-19 without mentioning estimated lethality rates. Treatment 1 Figure 4 displays the information given to the respondents assigned to Treatment T 1 . This group of respondents received information about the fact that the estimated average lethality rate of Covid-19 in China was 2.3%.
(a) In March the German government together with the federal states announced restrictions aimed at reducing the speed of the spread of the corona virus.
(b) It is difficult to assess how dangerous a virus is during a pandemic.
(c) A study for China shows that approximately 2.3% of those infected with the virus died during the course of the illness.