The Role of Risk Perceptions and Affective Consequences in COVID-19 Protective Behaviors

Abstract

Background Slowing the spread of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) requires behavioral changes such as physical distancing (e.g., staying a 6-foot distance from others, avoiding mass gatherings, reducing houseguests), wearing masks, reducing trips to nonessential business establishments, and increasing hand washing. Like other health behaviors, COVID-19 related behaviors may be related to risk representations. Risk representations are the cognitive responses a person holds about illness risk such as, identity (i.e., label/characteristics of risk), cause (i.e., factors causing condition), timeline (i.e., onset/duration of risk), consequences (i.e., intrapersonal/interpersonal outcomes), behavioral efficacy (i.e., if and how the condition can be controlled/treated), and illness risk coherence (i.e., extent to which representations, behaviors, and beliefs are congruent). The current study applies the Common-Sense Model of Self-Regulation (CSM-SR) to evaluate how risk representations may relate to COVID-19 protective and risk behaviors. Methods Participants include 400 workers from Amazon’s Mechanical Turk aged ≥ 18 years and US residents. Participants completed an online survey measuring risk representations (B-IPQ) and COVID-19 related behaviors, specifically, physical distancing, hand washing, and shopping frequency. Results Risk coherence, consequences, timeline, emotional representation, and behavioral efficacy were related to risk and protective behaviors. Conclusions Risk representations vary in their relationship to COVID-19 risk and protective behaviors. Implications include the importance of coherent, targeted, consistent health communication, and effective health policy in mitigating the spread of COVID-19.

An Integrated Model of Compliance with COVID-19 Prescriptions: Instrumental, Normative, and Affective Factors Associated with Health-Protective Behaviors

“…Speculatively, this could happen if people do not believe that they can cope effectively with the coronavirus crisis. Furthermore, these findings dovetail with prior research [ 5 ] that showed how negative affective responses stemmed out from the perceived risk of suffering the coronavirus were associated with engagement in COVID-19 related risk behaviors, such as having houseguests and shopping.…”

“…Recommendations included a range of behaviors that can be distinguished into preventative (i.e., hygiene behaviors such as hand washing, cleaning surfaces with alcohol-based disinfectants, sneezing and/or coughing in a tissue or elbow), and avoidant (i.e., physical distancing such as avoiding crowded places, home working and distance learning) conducts [ 4 ]. In this regard, Alegria, Fleszar-Pavlović, Ngo, et al [ 5 ] differentiated among COVID-19 related risk behaviors—such as having houseguests and shopping—and increased protective behaviors—for instance, hand washing. In specifics, examples of recommended preventative behaviors in Italy were washing hands often using soaps or alcohol-based solvents, not touching eyes, nose, and mouth with hands, sneezing and/or coughing in a tissue or elbow, using the face masks; in addition, examples of recommended avoidant behaviors were avoiding close contact with people, maintaining an interpersonal distance of at least one meter, avoided crowded places, leaving the house and traveling only for valid and urgent reasons.…”

Associations of COVID-19 Risk Perception, eHealth Literacy, and Protective Behaviors Among Chinese College Students Following Vaccination: A Cross-Sectional Study

“…Additionally, those who perceived themselves to be highly susceptible were inclined to reduce social contact (7). Alegria et al identified positive correlation between frequency of washing hands with self-perceived effectiveness of washing hands and epidemic risk perception based on the Common-Sense Model of Self-Regulation (CSM-SR) (8). Chinese college students were associated with a relatively high risk perception toward COVID-19 in the study of Ding et al, especially in female students and non-medical students as 92.5% of them believed that those in good health condition may be infected with COVID-19, and 85.1% of the college students were concerned about members of their family becoming infected (9).…”

Increased Risk Perception, Distress Intolerance and Health Anxiety in Stricter Lockdowns: Self-Control as a Key Protective Factor in Early Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…Following the fear appeal theory of public health (Witte & Allen, 2000), we assume that one major psychological function of governmental restrictions is increasing people's COVID-19 LOCKDOWN MEASURES AND PROTECTIVE FACTORS perception of risk of getting infected, so that they engage in preventive behaviors (Rogers, 1975;Tagini et al, 2021) such as social distancing or hand washing (e.g., Alegria et al, 2021). In addition, lockdown-dependent perceived risk of infection might be a stressor (Prati & Mancini, 2021) inducing depressive symptoms (Kim et al, 2021) and health anxiety (Mohd et al, 2021).…”