Emotions, governmental trust and support for the restriction of civil liberties during the covid?19 pandemic

The Covid-19 pandemic brought unprecedented governmental restrictions to personal and political freedoms. This article investigates individual-level differences in mass support for the restriction of civil liberties during first wave pandemic. Employing theories affect decision making, it assesses extent which different emotional reactions toward influenced attitudes mobile phone surveillance implementation curfews. We test our hypotheses five advanced European democracies using panel data allow us identify role emotions restrictive policies controlling individual heterogeneity. results suggest that experiencing fear about had a strong positive impact on supporting these measures, while hope anger only played minimal role. Importantly, findings indicate moderate trust government, key variable Specifically, was associated with higher acceptance liberty restrictions. Further, substantially decreased effect rendering those who lack government more supportive These help understand psychological mechanisms leads citizens swiftly decide sacrifice their light threat. they offer empirical causal decision-making.