Economic Constraints, Beliefs, and Distancing Compliance During COVID-19 in Malawi

Abstract Compliance with social distancing measures during COVID-19 was costly for households whose livelihoods required in-person activity. In low-income settings where savings are thin and insurance incomplete, even short income losses from staying home can carry high utility costs. Whether households actually comply may therefore depend not only on how risky they perceive the infection to be, but also on whether they can afford to act on that perception. This pre-analysis plan sets out how the paper will test that interaction using linked household panel data from Malawi: a high-frequency phone survey (HFPS, rounds 1–7, May 2020 to March 2021) paired with a pre-pandemic baseline survey (IHPS 2019) (Malawi National Statistical Office (NSO), 2020; National Statistical Office (NSO), 2020). The main text is organized around the three hypotheses the paper will test: whether perceived health risk predicts distancing, whether that relationship is weaker under tighter resource constraints, and whether better-resourced households show higher average compliance levels. At this stage, the document reports descriptive evidence only and does not present regression results.