Why the UK Complied with COVID-19 Lockdown Law

Abstract

In March 2020, the UK introduced a set of rules to ‘lockdown’ the country in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. These restrictions represented an extraordinary curtailment of normal life for the entire population, prohibiting people from leaving their homes without a reasonable excuse. The lockdown rules constituted a key feature of governmental efforts to manage the early stages of the pandemic crisis. Their central purpose was to change people’s routine behaviours in order to contain the rate of infections, thus protecting public health and preserving the NHS’s capacity to treat the anticipated influx of patients. Evidence suggests that the UK’s first lockdown attracted high levels of compliance. Yet, a question remains about exactly why the UK public complied. Understanding people’s motivations towards compliance is important for governments when, in periods of crisis, they seek to use rules to change an entire population’s routine behaviour at considerable pace. This is particularly the case in the context of a pandemic where changes in even a small number of people’s behaviours can make a big difference to the overall number of infections. While hitherto research has generally explored adherence to behavioural restrictions irrespective of the legal status of their underpinning rules, our analysis focuses