Kantar Launches G7 Citizen COVID-19 Impact Study

Kantar has launched a study to understand the impact the COVID-19 pandemic is having on citizens across the G7 nations.

Between 19th and 21st March, Kantar talked to 7,000 people in Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Italy, Great Britain and the US, in order to find out how society is perceiving and reacting to the health crisis. The data was weighted to match population totals for age, gender and education for each country; and countries weighted according to their population for overall results.

Conducted online to support social distancing protocols, the G7 public opinion study examined how citizens view their government's actions in terms of communications about coronavirus; the ability of public services to cope with the pandemic; and the perceived effectiveness of each country's government's interventions to contain the virus. In addition, the study looks at the impact of the pandemic on individuals' personal and household finances; and their personal behaviour changes in response to the crisis.

According to Kantar, the findings show overall high levels of support for government action and high levels of understanding of the personal measures needed to limit the spread of coronavirus. Public approval of government response was highest in Italy, where the public health impact of the virus is currently the heaviest; with 76% of people in Italy saying they somewhat or strongly approve of their national government's response to the pandemic. When it comes to the financial effect of the crisis, 71% of people in G7 say their personal income has or will be impacted by coronavirus - highest in Italy (85%), the US (75%) and Canada (75%).

Michelle Harrison, Global CEO of Kantar's Public Division, comments: 'This research provides a unique look at how citizens are viewing their governments handling of the crisis to date. Measuring the economic impact at the household level in terms of economic impact, and with this new understanding of how supportive and compliant citizens are across the G7 to government recommendations is crucial for policy to be able to respond and societies to be able to recover sustainably'.