Social Distancing Due to the COVID-19 Pandemic

Cato, S., Iida, T., Ishida, K., Ito, A., McElwain, K. M., & Shoji, M. (2020). Social distancing as a public good under the COVID-19 pandemic. Public health, 188, 51-53. https://doi.org/10.1016%2Fj.puhe.2020.08.005
In the article in question, the authors are concerned with the study of social distancing within the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, specifically, its assessment as a public good. The study was conducted through the application of a survey focused on two main points: first, the participants’ social distancing behavior over the last month or two months; second, the beliefs of the participants about behaviors towards others, which aimed at evaluating their altruistic tendencies and their sensitivity to public shame. The participants were Japanese citizens between the ages of 30 and 40 years old, selected through a quota sampling process. The results of the survey showed statistically significant differences in the levels of altruism and public shame of those participants that did execute social distancing in comparison to those who don’t, showing that the former two variables increase for those who do follow this measure. The relevance of this article relies on the importance of subjectivity to the comprehension of the public’s behaviors throughout the pandemic, as well as the intervention of public and private institutions to bring solutions to the issues that keep arising over time (Cato et al., 2020).
Romano, A., Spadaro, G., Balliet, D., Joireman, J., Van Lissa, C., Jin, S., … & Leander, N. P. (2021). Cooperation and trust across societies during the COVID-19 pandemic. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 52(7), 622-642. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022022120988913

The authors of this article had the main objective of assessing self-reported —and actual—willingness to engage in prosocial COVID-19 behaviors and support for regulation policies regarding behavior as relevant measures to determine cross-sectional differences in people’s responses to the pandemic. Also, they determine if such differentiations implicated the existence of social dilemmas within all these regions. The study consisted of the application of an online survey, which evaluated the predictors of cooperation, trust, institutional quality, religion, and historical prevalence of pathogens. It was presented in more than 30 languages across 41 societies from March 19th to May 11th, 2020, to a sample of 34.526 participants selected through a snowball sampling process. Although the results of the study showed no basis to affirm that there is a relationship between country-level predictors of cooperation and trust and cross-sectional differences in prosocial behavior within the COVID-19 pandemic, this article is nutritive because it opens a new line of research to the possible distinctions seen between different nations concerning preventive behavior for COVID-19, as well as the need to evaluate more closely each population’s conditions and possible interventions to exceed the actions of the community toward public health (Romano et al., 2021).
Johnson, T., Dawes, C., Fowler, J., & Smirnov, O. (2020). Slowing COVID-19 transmission as a social dilemma: Lessons for government officials from interdisciplinary research on
cooperation. Journal of Behavioral Public Administration, 3(1). https://doi.org/10.30636/jbpa.31.150
The article presented in this case corresponds to a literature review that evaluates the possible intervention that governments might exert to prevent social dilemmas amidst the COVID-19 pandemic related to the notions of the community about free riders or individuals that might benefit from the application of behaviors to decrease spreading rates of the virus while still not following the safety and preventive measures themselves. The analysis found that, although restrictive measures and regulations of this sort remain a necessary aspect of the procedures taken throughout the pandemic, the government and its public officials must pursue and
encourage cooperation in the communities; first, to prevent over-compensatory actions (e.g., violence, resource hoarding, etc.) derived from a lack of trust in members of the community;
second, to promote a long-term and stable mechanism where individuals trust in cooperation and trust to achieve mutual gain, and create effective ways to deal with a more manageable and minor group of people that might consider engaging in unsafe behaviors for the community (Johnson at al., 2020).
Second dilemma: groundwater consumption amidst environmental struggles

Cuadrado, E., Tabernero, C., García, R., Luque, B., & Seibert, J. (2017). The role of prosocialness and trust in the consumption of water as a limited resource. Frontiers in psychology, 8, 694. https://doi.org/10.3389%2Ffpsyg.2017.00694
The article focuses on the utilization of a virtual simulation game, Irrigania, to determine the relationship between two individual variables (prosocialness and trust) and two different
environmental conditions (cooperation and competition). The sample group consisted of 107 students with a degree in Environmental Science from the University of Córdoba who volunteered to take part in the research. The participants completed two scales for the measurement of the individual variables. Afterward, participants were located in different villages where they would belong alongside other farmers and attempted to increase their net income by choosing one out of three irrigation methods (rainfed agriculture, river water,
groundwater-based) based on different difficulties arising from the cooperation or competition conditions of the game. The results of the study showed long-term losses for the farmers who chose groundwater irrigation to maximize their income, higher net and accumulated income for the cooperative conditions since participants chose unselfish irrigation methods from the beginning and the intervention of individual factors (trust and prosocialness) as key factors to fundament the appropriate and less damaging usage of water. This is extremely valuable to the promotion of new strategies to safeguard natural resources and promote common-pool resources (Cuadrado et al., 2017).
Asprilla-Echeverria, J. (2021). The social drivers of cooperation in groundwater management and implications for sustainability. Groundwater for Sustainable Development, 15, 100668. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gsd.2021.100668
The current study corresponds to an exhaustive literature review about both the individual and social aspects involves in the management of common-pool resources. Recommendations to determine the best strategies to approach a long-term and, mostly, effective usage of common-pool resources include the promotion of efficient incentives and collective action; the former only results from the acquisition of a selfless posture concerning resources from all members of a population. Also, collective action is greatly influenced by individual perceptions concerning the viability of securing a set of resources and the needs surrounding the person.
However, the authors emphasize the overall benefits that come from the cooperation of each person. Also, it highlights the role of the government as a mediator in this reflexive and transformative process toward better handling of natural resources. In this sense, this article provides an important insight into the theoretical and practical evidence gathered from the year 1964 until 2018 through various articles and books to confirm the possibilities to not only maximize opportunities to better use groundwater and natural resources but to solve the inevitable struggles that come with time through the intervention of cooperative individual tendencies and behaviors (Asprilla-Echeverría et al., 2021).
Neal, M. J., Greco, F., Connell, D., & Conrad, J. (2016). The social-environmental justice of groundwater governance. Integrated Groundwater Management, 253. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-23576-9_10
This final article consists of a reflexive and theoretical study on the utilization of the concept of social and environmental justice as a means to re-evaluate the management of
common-pool resources such as it can be groundwater. In this sense, the article introduces the necessity to explore different scenarios before the application of rules concerning groundwater systems. First, the logical decisions that explain how a water resource will be used and shared among several individuals; second, the legal foundations upon which these decisions are taken, which includes the consideration of existing rules on the topic and the perceived outcomes that are expected from the decisions; third, the individuals taken into account to approve decisions concerning the usage of a groundwater mechanism. Therefore, the article succeeds in providing important reflections that concern the legal mechanisms that support individual and community decisions concerning natural resources and the intervention that public institutions can have in the management of the issues that might arise (Neal, 2016).

References

Asprilla-Echeverria, J. (2021). The social drivers of cooperation in groundwater management and implications for sustainability. Groundwater for Sustainable Development, 15, 100668. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gsd.2021.100668
Cato, S., Iida, T., Ishida, K., Ito, A., McElwain, K. M., & Shoji, M. (2020). Social distancing as a public good under the COVID-19 pandemic. Public health, 188, 51-53. https://doi.org/10.1016%2Fj.puhe.2020.08.005
Cuadrado, E., Tabernero, C., García, R., Luque, B., & Seibert, J. (2017). The role of prosocialness and trust in the consumption of water as a limited resource. Frontiers in psychology, 8, 694. https://doi.org/10.3389%2Ffpsyg.2017.00694
Johnson, T., Dawes, C., Fowler, J., & Smirnov, O. (2020). Slowing COVID-19 transmission as a social dilemma: Lessons for government officials from interdisciplinary research on cooperation. Journal of Behavioral Public Administration, 3(1). https://doi.org/10.30636/jbpa.31.150
Neal, M. J., Greco, F., Connell, D., & Conrad, J. (2016). The social-environmental justice of groundwater governance. Integrated Groundwater Management, 253.
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-23576-9_10

Romano, A., Spadaro, G., Balliet, D., Joireman, J., Van Lissa, C., Jin, S., & Leander, N. P.

(2021). Cooperation and trust across societies during the COVID-19 pandemic. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 52(7), 622-642.
https://doi.org/10.1177/0022022120988913