Cross-cultural Research of the Perceived Risk During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

One of the essential aspects in analyzing the topic of managing people's risk behavior in extreme situations is related to the issue of risk perception. The subject of this study was to reveal whether certain factors, such as cultural context, gender, age, education, religious beliefs, etc., mediate the perceived risk during the COVID-19 pandemic. The study was conducted online from April to June 2020. The two samples included a total of 2617 participants aged between 18 and 70 years, where 1412 of which were drawn from Asia and 1205 were representatives of Europe. Participants were asked to complete an internet-based version of a short questionnaire that described the COVID-19 pandemic situation, as one of the questions referred to the hazard perception of the infection. Results obtained showed that there was a higher level of perceived risk among members of the Asian culture group in comparison with the European study participants. Furthermore, it was revealed that gender is not a significant factor in the perception of risk in either the European or the Asian cultural group (p> 0.05). The results showed that levels of the perceived risk increased with age and that there were significant differences between young and old in threat perception for the European sample (p<0.001). Regarding the Asian sample, it turned out that all age groups perceive the risk of infection almost equally. Several demographic characteristics also emerged as important mediators of risk perception. For example, people with the lowest education, married, religious, and families with children fear the hazard of COVID-19 infection to the greatest extent, compared to people with the highest education, singles, atheists, and families without children, who do not perceive the virus as a high-risk factor.