Cross-Cultural Bayesian Network Analysis of Factors Affecting Residents’ Concerns About the Spread of an Infectious Disease Caused by Tourism

Abstract

COVID-19 has had a severe impact globally, and the recovery can be characterized as a tug of war between fast economic recovery and firm control of further virus-spread. To be prepared for future pandemics, public health policy makers should put effort into fully understanding any complex psychological tensions that inherently arise between opposing human factors such as free enjoyment versus self-restriction. As the COVID-19 crisis is an unusual and complex problem, combinations of diverse factors such as health risk perception, knowledge, norms and beliefs, attitudes and behaviors are closely associated with individuals’ intention to enjoy the experience economy but also their concerns that the experience economy will trigger further spread of the infectious diseases. Our aim is to try identifying what factors are associated with their concerns about the spread of the infectious disease caused by the local experience economy. Hence, we have chosen a “data-driven” explanatory approach, “Probabilistic Structural Equational Modeling,” based on the principle of Bayesian networks to analyze data collected from the following four countries with indicated sample sizes: Denmark (1,005), Italy (1,005), China (1,013), and Japan (1,091). Our findings highlight the importance of understanding the contextual differences in relations between the target variable and factors such as personal value priority and knowledge. These factors affect the target variable differently depending on the local severity-level of the infections. Relations between pleasure-seeking via the experience economy and individuals’ anxiety-level about an infectious hotspot seem to differ between East Asians and Europeans who are known to prioritize so-called interpersonal- and independent self-schemes, respectively. Our study also indicates the heterogeneity in the populations, i.e., these relations differ within the respective populations. Another finding shows that the Japanese population is particularly concerned about their local community potentially becoming an infectious hotspot and hence expecting others to comply with their particular social norms. Summarizing, the obtained insights imply the importance of considering both cultural- and individual contexts when policy makers are going to develop measures to address pandemic dilemmas such as maintaining public health awareness and accelerating the recovery of the local experience economy.

Risk perceptions, attitudes, and behavioral intentions to spend on experiences in the post-Corona crisis: Data from Italy, Denmark, China, and Japan

“…For example, as individuals’ attitudes and behaviors to a crisis are strongly connected with personal values [3 , 8] , norms, and beliefs [4 , 9] , the questionnaire included questions about individuals’ personal values [3] , [8] , [10] , perceived risk [11] and their associated attitudes and behavioral intentions [12 , 13] . The implication of some of these theoretical concepts has been elaborated and analyzed in [1] . Supplementary materials accessible in [2] include a coded master questionnaire in English and its translation to Chinese, Danish, Italian and Japanese.…”

“…After the cleaning the complete data delivered by You Gov were China ( n = 1,019), Denmark ( n = 1,028) and Italy ( n = 1,014), and by Cross Marketing was Japan ( n = 1,111). Data source location Institution: YouGov City/Town/Region: Copenhagen Country: Denmark Institution: Cross Marketing Inc. City/Town/Region: Tokyo Country: Japan Data accessibility Repository name: [Zenodo] Data identification number: [DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.5176085 ] Direct URL to data: [ https://zenodo.org/record/5176085#.YSFSlo4zZPZ ] Related research article Selected variables in this dataset have been filtered, analyzed, and presented in [1] : Glückstad F.K., Wiil U.K., Mansourvar M. and Andersen P.T. (2021) Cross-Cultural Bayesian Network Analysis of Factors Affecting Residents’ Concerns About the Spread of an Infectious Disease Caused by Tourism.…”

National Vulnerability to Pandemics: The Role of Macroenvironmental Factors in COVID‐19 Evolution

“…ey conclude that "group-oriented and collectivist values and low egalitarianism values" contributed favorably to COVID-19 fatality. Following a cross-cultural Bayesian analysis, Kano Glückstad et al [24] found that cultural values shape healthcare indicators depending on degree of local infections; pleasure seeking differently modulates the anxiety toward infection according to culture.…”

Exploration of a Large-Scale Dataset to Understand the Link of Social Interaction with Psychological Problems Amid Mild Lockdown for COVID-19

“…However, compared to the people without depressive disorder, researchers found a simpler network of community structure for the people with depressive disorder. Through building a multi-cultural Bayesian network, researchers (Glückstad et al 2021) found Japanese peoples' anxiety about the risk of COVID hotspots.…”