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Understanding the dynamic link between the development of COVID-19 pandemic and industry sector risk spillovers is crucial to explore the underlying mechanisms by which major public health events affect economic systems. This paper applies ElasticNet method proposed by Diebold and Yilmaz (2009, 2012, 2014) to estimate the dynamic risk spillover indicators of 20 industrial sectors in China from 2016 to 2022, and systematically examines the impact of industry risk network fluctuations and the transmission path caused by COVID-19 shock. The findings reveal that risk spillovers of Chinese industries show a dynamic change of "decline-fluctuation-rebound" with the three phases of COVID-19 epidemic. At the beginning of the epidemic, machinery and equipment, paper and printing, tourism and hotels, media and information services, and agriculture were the exporters of epidemic risk, while materials, transportation equipment, commercial trade, health care, and environmental protection were the importers of epidemic risk; However, as the epidemic developed further, the direction and effect of risk transmission in the industry was reversed. Examining the network characteristics of the pair sectors, we found that under the epidemic shock, the positive risk spillover from tourism and hotels, culture, education and sports to consumer goods, finance, and energy industries was significantly increased, and finance and real estate industries were affected by the risk impact of more industries, while the number of industries affected by information technology and computer industry was significantly reduced. This paper shows that there is inter-industry risk transmission of the COVID-19 epidemic shock, and the risk transmission feeds back in a cycle between industries as the epidemic develops, driving the economy into a vicious circle. The role of the service sector in blocking the spread of negative shocks from the epidemic should be emphasized and brought into play to avoid increasing the overall economic vulnerability. This study will help to deepen the understanding of scholars and policy makers on the network transmission effects of the epidemic., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist., (Copyright: © 2023 Ling et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)

BackgroundThe repeated outbreaks of COVID-19 and the rapid increase in uncertainty have had many negative effects on the public’s mental health, especially on emotional aspects such as anxiety and depression. However, in previous studies, there are few studies exploring the positive factors between uncertainty and anxiety. The innovation of this study is the first to explore the mechanism of coping style and resilience as people’s psychological protective factors between uncertainty and anxiety caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.MethodsThis study explored the relationship between intolerance of uncertainty and anxiety of freshmen with coping style as mediating variable and resilience as moderating variable. A total of 1049 freshmen participated in the study and completed the Intolerance of Uncertainty Scale (IUS-12), Self-rating Anxiety Scale (SAS), Simplified Coping Style Questionnaire (SCSQ), and Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC).ResultsSAS score of the surveyed students (39.56 ± 10.195) was significantly higher than that of the Normal Chinese score (29.78 ± 10.07, p < 0.001). Intolerance of uncertainty was significantly positively correlated with anxiety (β = 0.493, p < 0.001). Positive coping style has a significant negative impact on anxiety (β = −0.610, p < 0.001), negative coping style has a significant positive impact on anxiety (β = 0.951, p < 0.001). Resilience moderates the second half of the influence of negative coping style on anxiety (β = 0.011, t = 3.701, p < 0.01).ConclusionThe findings suggest that high levels of intolerance of uncertainty had negative effects mental burden during the COVID-19 pandemic. The knowledge of the mediating role of coping style and the moderating role of resilience may be used by health care workers when consulting freshmen with physical health complaints and psychosomatic disorders.