Search

Understanding human responses to pandemics can improve public health. A survey of US residents (n = 2004) February 28, 2020, very early in the coronavirus pandemic, tested predictors of five "protective" actions: washing hands, wearing masks, avoiding travel, avoiding large public gatherings, and avoiding Asians (given COVID-19's first appearance in China). We added to the Protective Action Decision Model—positing threat, protective action, and stakeholder perceptions as immediate predictors of intentions—objective and subjective coronavirus knowledge as predictors of these perceptions, and psychological distance to predict threat perceptions. We presumed objective and subjective knowledge were affected by following US and China news about COVID-19. Structural equation modeling indicated adequate fit for this parsimonious model; variance explained in behavioral intentions ranged from.12 (handwashing) to.33 (Asians). Behavioral intentions rose with higher threat, action, and stakeholder (trust) perceptions, psychological distance reduced threat perceptions, objective knowledge reduced threat and action perceptions but increased trust, and subjective knowledge did the opposite. Coronavirus-news following increased both objective and subjective knowledge, but subjective knowledge exhibited stronger associations and US news dominated China news. Moderate model fit and variance explained might reflect model parsimony and/or data collection when US cases were in the low double digits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cross-sectional surveys, despite their value, are unable to probe dynamics of risk perceptions over time. An earlier longitudinal panel study of Americans' views on Ebola risk inspired this partial replication on Americans' views of Zika risks, using multilevel modeling to assess temporal changes in these views and inter-individual factors affecting them, and to determine if similar factors were influential for both non-epidemics in the USA. Baseline Zika risk scores – as in the Ebola study – were influenced by dread of the Zika virus, perceptions of a near-miss outbreak, and perceived likelihood of an outbreak. Judgments of both personal risk and national risk from Zika declined significantly, and individual rates of news following predicted slower decline of perceived national risk in both cases. However, few other factors affected changes in Zika risk judgments, which did not replicate in a validation half-sample, whereas several factors slowed or increased the rate of decline in Ebola judgments of the U.S. risk. These differences might reflect differences in the diseases caused by these two viruses – e.g., Ebola's much greater lethality – but more longitudinal studies across multiple diseases will be needed to test that speculation. Benefits of such studies to health risk analysis outweigh the difficulties they pose. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]