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The need to contain infection transmission challenged policy-makers. New norms and rules forced significant changes in the behavior of individuals and communities. These rules affected several policy domains, involving up to three levels of governance. Obtaining citizens’ compliance is essential to the success of any policy/measure. This project will establish how and why decision-makers opt for different compliance mechanisms and will also diagnose the accuracy in the design of policies against the beliefs of the targeted population. We conjecture the existence of a paradox of social acceptability: more effective, but stricter policies are only socially acceptable when the perception of threat in a population is high. The findings will help to improve policy-making by answering the question of whether policy-makers' expectations match the determinants of the social acceptability of different policies.

The need to contain infection transmission challenged policy-makers. New norms and rules forced significant changes in the behavior of individuals and communities. These rules affected several policy domains, involving up to three levels of governance. Obtaining citizens’ compliance is essential to the success of any policy/measure. This project will establish how and why decision-makers opt for different compliance mechanisms and will also diagnose the accuracy in the design of policies against the beliefs of the targeted population. We conjecture the existence of a paradox of social acceptability: more effective, but stricter policies are only socially acceptable when the perception of threat in a population is high. The findings will help to improve policy-making by answering the question of whether policy-makers' expectations match the determinants of the social acceptability of different policies.