Public Deservingness Discourses and Judgements of Pandemic Risk Groups After COVID-19: A Vignette-based Qualitative Study in Hong Kong

Significant progress has been made in variable-oriented quantitative research to enhance both theoretical and empirical understandings of public attitudes towards the government’s role in addressing income and wealth inequalities, as well as providing welfare support for the most vulnerable. However, recent advancements in “welfare deservingness” theory, which examines the principles underlying the legitimacy of welfare provision, have yet to be thoroughly explored within the context of Hong Kong. Moreover, there has been no systematic effort to investigate how public discourses and judgments regarding welfare deservingness might diverge during periods of crisis compared to times of “stability”. To address this research gap, this study adopts a qualitative research design comprising focus groups to generate nuanced insights into the narratives and judgments employed by Hong Kong residents to assess the relative deservingness of pandemic risk groups in the aftermath of COVID-19. Specifically, through meticulously crafted long vignettes and a purposively selected sample of 64 respondents representing homogeneous, theoretically relevant socio-economic groups, we examined varying narratives, rationales, and underlying principles that inform the construction of pandemic risk groups’ welfare deservingness. The collected data were transcribed verbatim and analysed using open and theoretically-informed thematic coding techniques to develop a locally grounded conceptualisation of relative welfare deservingness criteria and principles within Hong Kong’s post-productivist welfare context. The findings illuminate the familial yet dynamic foundations that underpin the multifaceted construction of welfare deservingness in Chinese and East Asian societies. Furthermore, this study contributes to international scholarship by examining the ex-post and ex-ante effects of relative welfare deservingness narratives and judgments on contemporary and future welfare policymaking in the context of increased uncertainty, ambiguity, and permacrisis. The implications of our findings for enhancing future crisis preparedness across East Asia will also be discussed.