Risk Perception and Protective Behaviors During the Rise of the COVID-19 Outbreak in Italy.
COVID-19
SARS-CoV-2
affect
coronavirus
cultural worldviews
health behavior
risk perception
social norms
Journal
Frontiers in psychology
ISSN: 1664-1078
Titre abrégé: Front Psychol
Pays: Switzerland
ID NLM: 101550902
Informations de publication
Date de publication:
2020
2020
Historique:
received:
30
06
2020
accepted:
09
12
2020
entrez:
1
2
2021
pubmed:
2
2
2021
medline:
2
2
2021
Statut:
epublish
Résumé
Risk perception is important in determining health-protective behavior. During the rise of the COVID-19 epidemic, we tested a comprehensive structural equation model of risk perception to explain adherence to protective behaviors in a crisis context using a survey of 572 Italian citizens. We identified two categories of protective behaviors, labeled promoting hygiene and cleaning, and avoiding social closeness. Social norms and risk perceptions were the more proximal antecedents of both categories. Cultural worldviews, affect, and experience of COVID-19 were the more distal predictors. Promoting hygiene and cleaning was triggered by the negative affective attitude toward coronavirus and mediated by an affective appraisal of risk. The deliberate dimension of risk perception (perceived likelihood) predicted only avoiding social closeness. Social norms predicted both types of behaviors and mediated the relations of cultural worldviews. Individualism (vs. communitarianism), more than hierarchy (vs. egalitarianism), shaped the affective evaluation of coronavirus. The model was an acceptable fit to the data and accounted for 20% and 29% of the variance in promoting hygiene and cleaning, and avoiding social closeness, respectively. The findings were robust to the effect of sociodemographic factors (age, gender, education, socioeconomic status, and zone of the country). Taken together, our findings confirmed the empirical distinction between affective and deliberate processes in risk perception, supported the validity of the affect heuristic, and highlighted the role of social norms as an account for why individualistic people were less likely to follow the prescribed health-protective behaviors. Implications for risk communication are discussed.
Identifiants
pubmed: 33519593
doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.577331
pmc: PMC7838090
doi:
Types de publication
Journal Article
Langues
eng
Pagination
577331Informations de copyright
Copyright © 2021 Savadori and Lauriola.
Déclaration de conflit d'intérêts
The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
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