Lockdown measures have been widely used to control and prevent virus transmission in pandemic regions. However, the psychological effects of lockdown measures have been neglected, and the related theoretical research lags behind the practice. The present study aimed to better understand the mechanism of social anxiety in pandemic regions where the lockdown measures were imposed, based on the conceptual framework of the Stimulus-Organism-Response (SOR). For that, this research investigated how lockdown measures and psychological distance influenced social anxiety in the pandemic region. The Chinese national data was analyzed for the outcome. The results showed that (1) psychological distance mediated the relationship between pandemic COVID-19 severity and social anxiety, (2) lockdown measures buffered the detrimental effect of the COVID-19 pandemic severity on social anxiety, (3) lockdown measures moderated the mediation effect of psychological distancing on social anxiety caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. In conclusion, under the SOR framework, the lockdown measures had a buffer effect on social anxiety in pandemic regions, with the mediating role of psychological distancing.

(1) Background: The governance measures that governments deploy vary substantially across countries and even within countries; there is, however, limited knowledge of the responses of local governments or from different areas in the same country. (2) Methods: By using grounded theory and an automatic text processing method, this study analyses the pandemic governance measures, the pandemic governance pattern, and possible factors across 28 provinces in mainland China based on the text of 28 official provincial government Sina microblogs dating from 20 January to 1 July 2020. (3) Results and discussion: The provincial pandemic governance patterns in China are divided into a pathogen-control pattern, a diagnosis and treatment consolidation pattern, a balanced promotion pattern, a quick-adjustment response pattern, and a recovery-oriented pattern. The pandemic severity, economic development, public health service, and population structure may all have an impact on pandemic governance measures. (4) Conclusions: The conclusions of this study may help us to reconstruct governance systems related to global public health emergencies from the perspective of normalisation, as well as providing important clarification for management and a reference for countries seeking to curb the global spread of a pandemic.