How COVID-19 Triggers Our Herding Behavior? Risk Perception, State Anxiety, and Trust

Yi-Chih Lee,Wei-Li Wu,Chia-Ko Lee

doi:10.3389/fpubh.2021.587439

Abstract

People have felt afraid during the outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), because a virus is an invisible enemy. During the pandemic outbreak, society has become worried about the spread of infections and the shortage of protective equipment. This common fear among the public subsequently deepens each person's fear, increasing their belief in the content reported by the media and thus actively compelling these individuals to engage in the behavior of panic buying. In this study, we explored the effects of the public's risk perception, state anxiety, and trust in social media on the herding effect among individuals. The study was based on an online questionnaire survey and convenience sampling. The results showed that the public's risk perception increased their state anxiety and then deepened their willingness to wait in line for a purchase. In addition, the more people that trust the message delivered by the media, the more actively they will join the queue to buy goods. This study also found that anxiety had a greater impact on the public's willingness to wait for a purchase than trust in social media. Therefore, the top priority for the government should be to reduce the public's state anxiety and then reduce the herding effect.

Highlights

In December 2019, the city of Wuhan detected cases of viral pneumonia with uncertain causes
The samples collected in this study were taken from those people who had the experience of lining up to buy personal protective equipment
This study demonstrated that the indirect effect of risk perception on herd bias via state anxiety was 0.1709, with a 95% confidence interval that did not contain zero (CI = [0.0770, 0.2858])

Summary

Introduction

In December 2019, the city of Wuhan detected cases of viral pneumonia with uncertain causes. On December 31, 2019, the World Health Organization (WHO) was informed that the Chinese government had discovered more than 40 cases of a new viral infection in Wuhan. At the end of January 2020, Taiwan confirmed its first case of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) [1]. When a new disease appears, the public lacks adequate knowledge of and misunderstands the disease. They will perceive the new disease based on their previous experiences with the flu or other illnesses, which will influence their attitudes and preventative responses to the new disease [2, 3]. COVID-19 is new virus, and the number of confirmed cases (and viral spread) are increasing rapidly. Once one has symptoms, it is considered “too late” [5]

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