Research Insights: Public Sector Employee Behavior and Attitudes during a Pandemic

New data on public sector employees from 18 Latin American countries shed light on the role of trust in the performance of government agencies. An original survey conducted during the first COVID-19 wave includes randomized experiments with pandemic-related treatments. Individual-level trust in coworkers, other public employees, and citizens is positively related to performance-enhancing behaviors and policy attitudes. High-trust and low-trust respondents report different assessments of their main work constraints. Also, they draw different inferences and prefer different policy responses when exposed to data-based framing treatments about social distancing outcomes in their countries.