Abstract
Social distancing is an effective measure to prevent epidemic infections during a pandemic outbreak, but its psychological value in COVID-19 pandemic mitigation remained less detected. Our study fills this gap by conducting a nationwide survey in China between 12 and 25 February (2020), and a follow-up survey targeting the same participants between 25 and 28 March (2020). We have discovered that perceived increased time staying at home, a subjective agency for social distancing, positively predicts not only risk perception of COVID-19 epidemic at the outbreak and eased stage, but also predicts subjective controllability of COVID-19 epidemic at the eased stage. Given that risk perception indicates potential active engagement of preventative behavior and that subjective controllability associating with self-efficacy could promote individual health behavior, this study preliminarily justifies the value of social distancing from the angle of perceptual factors, adding to existing mounting evidence of its effect on physically controlling pandemic spread.
Highlights
The COVID-19 pandemic is still rapidly raging worldwide
We conducted two online survey studies in China during the COVID-19 outbreak and eased stages to detect both instant and lasting effects of perceived increased time staying at home due to social distancing on risk perception and controllability perception of COVID-19 pandemic
Our major variables of interest were two outcomes: risk perception and perceived controllability of COVID-19 epidemic and one predictor, perceived increased time staying at home (PIT)
Summary
The COVID-19 pandemic is still rapidly raging worldwide. scientists around the world are continually working on developing a safe and effective COVID-19 vaccine, “with the mutant highly transmissible strain, it will require 90% of the population to be vaccinated to reach herd immunity”, quoting Dr Manoj Jain, an infectious disease physician in Memphis. Before we reach this point current pandemic control still needs parallel strategies such as social distancing, hygiene and contact tracing (Ruppel et al, 2021). Scientists around the world are continually working on developing a safe and effective COVID-19 vaccine, “with the mutant highly transmissible strain, it will require 90% of the population to be vaccinated to reach herd immunity”, quoting Dr Manoj Jain, an infectious disease physician in Memphis.. Scientists around the world are continually working on developing a safe and effective COVID-19 vaccine, “with the mutant highly transmissible strain, it will require 90% of the population to be vaccinated to reach herd immunity”, quoting Dr Manoj Jain, an infectious disease physician in Memphis.1 Before we reach this point current pandemic control still needs parallel strategies such as social distancing, hygiene and contact tracing (Ruppel et al, 2021). We refer to two hypothesized individual perceptual factors that are highly likely to be brought about by social distancing and that might greatly benefit COVID-19 outbreak control—pandemic risk perception and controllability perception
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