Wearing a mask: why betting on the responsibility of the French is a bad strategy

Since May 16, 2022, the government has lifted the obligation to wear a mask, except in health establishments. Faced with the increase in the incidence of Covid-19 cases, the latter again calls for the responsibility of the French. Let’s see why this is probably a bad strategy.

“I call on everyone to be vigilant… but no, we do not intend to have a national measure of obligation. I think that the French today know the right gestures. » These words are those of Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne, spoken on July 6, 2022 on TF1 about wearing a mask. In Nice, the wearing of a compulsory mask made a brief return in transport before being suspended by the courts. From an economic point of view, by refusing to make wearing a mask compulsory, the government is giving up funding for an essential public good in this pandemic period : a air more or less devoid of virus particles.

Public goods theory

In his seminal 1954 articleeconomist Paul Samuelson defines public goods as follows: public goods are goods whose individual consumption does not lead to the impossibility for another individual to benefit from them.. Even though other theorists have refined Samuelson’s model, it remains largely operational to reflect on the question that concerns us today. Air free of viral particles of all kinds can be considered a public good. If you breathe air without virus particles in a cinema, that does not prevent your neighbor from breathing it. We then say that this good is non-rival (individuals are not in competition to benefit from this good) and non-exclusive (one cannot restrict access to this good). But for that, the majority of people must finance this public good, in other words, gate a mask. And this is where things get complicated.

The problem of stowaways

This is a classic problem in behavioral economics which focuses on the behavior of actors supposed to finance a public good. Experimental data show that, when receiving such financing, individuals can belong to four distinct categories:

• unconditional cooperators who will wear the mask no matter what;
• the perfect conditional cooperators who will be inclined to wear the mask, the greater the proportion of people who wear it;
• stowaways who do not wear a mask but take advantage of the investment of others to breathe air devoid of viral particles;
• imperfect conditional cooperators who exhibit conditional cooperative behavior up to a certain threshold but become free riders as the number of people adhering to mask wearing increases.

Unconditional cooperators are few in number and have very specific motivations (altruism, effect warm glow, etc.) are behind their actions. Conversely, perfect conditional cooperators are numerous (50% of individuals according to studies), closely followed by free riders (33% according to studies) and imperfect conditional cooperators (14% according to studies). You are now able to understand the vicious circle that takes place when it comes to financing a public good: conditional cooperators do not want to cooperate if there are too many free riders. And the more the situation is repeated, the more the number of conditional cooperators decreases and the more the number of stowaways increases, which leads to an absence of financing for the public good.

What conclusions should be drawn from this?

Call on the individual responsibility of the French for the financing of a public good is a double burden and a lack of knowledge of the behavioral sciences. On the one hand, this can accentuate the split between citizens in a highly tense period and, on the other, it is to weigh on individuals a pressure which is in reality the action of the State.

We are, for the most part, conditional cooperators and need motivations to adopt behaviors. Mandating the wearing of a mask respects a principle of minimal harm (see the video below), which makes this measure completely legitimate to restrict the freedom of individuals. By considering that the State has a duty to protect its population by financing access to public goods that escape market regulation (by ensuring access to healthcare or justice typically) and finances, we can end up to the conclusion that by refusing to re-introduce this measure into law knowing that the call for accountability does not work, the government is probably failing in its duty towards the French people, in particular the most fragile.