WHAT IS MORALITY TO THE LEFT/RIGHT?:

[O]n 2020, we set out to engage with the public. We completed three representative national surveys, collected more than 100,000 words of focus group contributions, and undertook 50 hours of detailed interviews. Here are our five most important findings.

First, most of the public were generally willing to comply strictly with the lockdown restrictions. Parts of the population "bent" rules on occasion and rates of compliance also diminished over time. But, if assessed in terms of its ability to secure public compliance, lockdown was a policy that was strikingly successful.

Second, while the public started with a high level of understanding of lockdown restrictions, confusion grew as rules became more complex. Perhaps most importantly, there was extensive confusion relating to the legal status of specific rules--was something law or just guidance? This confusion had real implications for how people behaved: people were more likely to comply with a lockdown rule if they thought it had the status of law and was not just guidance.

Third, there were three key drivers of compliance with lockdown law: an anticipation that rule-breaking would be met with disapproval from one's peers; the conviction that breaking lockdown rules was morally wrong; and a general commitment to being law-abiding. People's sense of the effectiveness of the rules in preventing virus transmission was linked to these basic drivers, as was their sense of obligation to others, and their predictions of how seriously Covid-19 would affect their health if they were infected. A small minority had a conviction that restrictions unacceptably infringed their basic rights, and this group were notably less concerned with the morality of breaking lockdown laws.

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