The Relationship between Risk Event Involvement and Risk Perception during the COVID-19 Outbreak in China.

Abstract

BackgroundThe coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID‐19) is a worldwide pandemic that continues to spread and the situation continues to deteriorate globally. It is also a risk event for the public in affected areas. However, little is known about the relationship between “being involved/exposed in a risk event at the moment” and people’s risk perception of that event.MethodsThe mediation model and analysis of covariance method were performed on a Chinese sample (N = 351) during the outbreak of COVID‐19 to test the underlying mechanism between risk event involvement and risk perception.ResultsRisk event involvement was positively related not only to people’s event‐related risk perception but also their general risk perception (i.e. risk perception towards other events), and negative emotion mediated these relationships. In addition, the residents of Wuhan (vs. non‐Wuhan) exhibited significantly higher event‐related risk perception as well as general risk perception.ConclusionsThe findings deepen our understanding of risk perception by suggesting that being involved in a risk event at the moment is also a nonnegligible variable positively related to risk perception through increased negative emotion. Finally, theoretical and managerial implications of the result are discussed.