Abstract
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.
Highlights
Individual behavior and risk perception are two interrelated aspects of a disease outbreak
Since decisions are not made in a social vacuum, this study further examines to what extent COVID-19 risk perception is explained by individual-level and social-level factors
Notwithstanding its limitations, the present study provided insights into how experience, affective attitudes, risk perceptions, cultural worldviews, and social norms accounted for individual differences in health-protective behaviors during the first period of the COVID-19 outbreak in Italy
Summary
Individual behavior and risk perception are two interrelated aspects of a disease outbreak. Higher perceived risk can increase an individual’s adherence to preventive measures (e.g., Brewer et al, 2007) and control the spread of the outbreak. It is important to gain insights into the factors predicting risk perception and their impact on the adherence to protective measures during the COVID-19 pandemic. The total infected cases were 17,660, and the death toll was 1,266 out of 60 million inhabitants. The total positive cases were 221,216, the death toll had grown to 30,911, and COVID cases were diagnosed nationwide. Our data portray a period in which the disease infection was spreading, the emergency was rising, and the attention of the media and the entire population was overly focused on the hazard
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