During the pandemic, some people saw strict controls as a shared shield, while others saw them as a personal burden. This study finds that the difference helped shape whether people accepted zero-COVID rules. The pandemic damaged health, daily life, and the economy worldwide.

Some countries later argued that people should live with the disease by easing distancing, masking, testing, and other strict controls. That meant reducing restrictions and treating COVID nineteen more like other illnesses, including influenza, as countries sought to return to pre pandemic routines.

Mainland China and Taiwan stayed with zero-COVID, a strategy built around lockdowns, required testing, travel bans, and quarantine to crush any sign of an outbreak. Compared with protests against lockdowns in some Western countries, these two societies endured tight public-health controls with almost no public resistance.

That is the puzzle. The study asked whether people’s cultural values predicted support for zero-COVID in Mainland China and Taiwan. It also asked whether trust in government and trusted media figures helped explain that connection.

The key idea is like a neighborhood agreeing to close its road during a flood: people may accept a personal inconvenience when they see the danger as shared, not as something affecting only themselves. To examine these questions, online surveys were conducted in Mainland China and Taiwan from November to December twenty twenty-one.

The recruitment aimed to reflect people’s age, gender, and residential backgrounds. From November to December twenty twenty one, researchers recruited participants in Mainland China and Taiwan, with independent agencies overseeing recruitment in each region.

All participants completed an online survey, using QuestionPro in Mainland China and SurveyCake in Taiwan as the designated platforms for their regions. The results found that people who regarded the pandemic as a collective concern were more likely to endorse zero-COVID.

But people who interpreted the pandemic as an individual issue were less likely to accept the policy. Across both societies, seeing the outbreak as personal pushed acceptance downward. Trust helped connect these views to policy acceptance.

For people who saw the pandemic as a collective concern, trust in government and trust in media figures both helped explain support for zero-COVID. For people who saw the pandemic as an individual issue, trust in government did not explain acceptance, while trust in media figures did.

The two routes were meaningfully different. People who saw the pandemic as a shared concern were more likely to trust the government and accept strict zero-COVID measures; seeing it as a personal concern also related to government trust, but related directly to less acceptance of those measures.

The study concludes that policy acceptance was shaped by both cultural values and trust, and that the relationship differed between Mainland China and Taiwan because their surrounding conditions differed. The practical message is direct: governments should prioritize their own ability and care, build social identity among citizens, and cultivate public trust to promote acceptance of zero COVID.

People who viewed the outbreak as a collective problem were more likely to accept zero-COVID, especially when they trusted government. Public support depended on both shared values and confidence in those enforcing the rules.