During the COVID-19 pandemic, scientists and policymakers repeatedly appealed for solidarity to motivate the population to comply with protective measures. However, the longer the pandemic lasted, the more the limits of solidarity became apparent. As part of the research project "Solidarity in times of pandemic" (SolPan), our team interviewed 46 adults living in Germany three times over a period of one and a half years. We wanted to discover how people experience the pandemic daily, how they behave, and why.

We found that solidarity played a key role in coping with the pandemic crisis in Germany, as in other European countries. At the same time, however, a change in behavior and attitudes became apparent: while solidarity was discussed very prominently and viewed positively at the beginning of the pandemic, this initial enthusiasm quickly waned. As the pandemic progressed, respondents increasingly emphasized the high individual and social costs they had to bear in order to protect themselves and others. These included being unable to visit family members, take children to school or daycare, or pursue hobbies as usual.

At the same time, some participants also noticed that the protective measures in particular hindered solidarity in many places because it was no longer possible to be so close and provide direct support. Between April 2020 and October 2020, the solidarity initiatives that sprouted up at the beginning, such as offers to go shopping for each other, also increasingly disappeared. The reason given by some participants for this was that they had either not responded to their offer or that the people concerned wanted to take care of their own shopping again. Precisely because there was little feedback on these offers, some interviewees also perceived this as a lack of reciprocity. Many would have wished that their offer had at least been gratefully declined or otherwise appreciated. Accordingly, participants reported that as the pandemic progressed, they increasingly focused on their immediate environment, i.e. family, friends or key neighbors (from whom they received this appreciation).

However, participants continued to see solidarity as necessary in coping with the pandemic, and in October 2020 and October 2021, they called on scientific institutions, government agencies, and individual policymakers to not only insist on individual solidarity but also to increase institutional solidarity. Over the course of our study, participants' perceptions of who would be harmed by the pandemic changed. By October 2020 and 2021, it was no longer just the elderly but also children, young people, nursing and hospital staff, people in the arts and crafts, the self-employed, and small businesses. According to our interviewees, all these people have not received enough solidarity from the authorities or in decisions. Our results also showed that social measures, such as institutional financial relief, need not be aimed at everyone but mainly at those who were perceived to be particularly burdened. When these groups were not supported, but individual solidarity was insisted on, our participants perceived this as an unbalanced distribution of solidarity and its costs.

Our work clearly shows that collective solidarity behavior positively affected people's motivation to protect themselves from COVID-19 infection, especially at the beginning. It is, therefore, essential to strengthen this collective solidarity in the longer term for future crises. Central to our understanding is that solidarity lasted longer when people perceived reciprocity. During the COVID-19 pandemic, it seemed to some respondents those various institutions demanded solidarity from individuals rather than, for example, making employers responsible (in the form of a home office requirement).

Based on our study, our central thesis is that more institutionalized solidarity in the form of measures that consider the most disadvantaged (such as children or people in care institutions) would also strengthen the motivation of individuals to act in solidarity. Rather than calling for individual solidarity in times of crisis, policymakers and public authorities should, therefore, consider setting up sustainable social support systems that go beyond immediate crisis management. These efforts should also be transparently communicated, emphasizing the importance of solidarity.

To the study: https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12889-023-17521-7