Department of History, Political Science and International Studies, University of Minnesota-Duluth.
Annenberg Public Policy Center, University of Pennsylvania.
Health Commun. 2020 Nov;35(13):1686-1697. doi: 10.1080/10410236.2019.1662556. Epub 2019 Sep 2.
Public opinion researchers often find changing attitudes about pressing public health issues to be a difficult task and even when attitudes do change, behaviors often do not. However, salient real-world events have the ability to bring public health crises to the fore in unique ways. To assess the impact of localized public health events on individuals' self-reported behavior, this paper examines Floridians' intentions to take preventative measures against the Zika virus before and after the first locally transmit- ted case of Zika emerged in Florida. We find that local and national media coverage of Zika increased significantly following its first transmission in the U.S. Critically, we also find that Floridians surveyed after this increase in media coverage were more likely to pay attention to Zika-related news, and self-report intentions to take protective action against the virus. These results suggest that behavioral intentions can shift as health threats become more proximate.
公众意见研究人员经常发现，改变公众对紧迫的公共卫生问题的态度是一项艰巨的任务，即使态度发生了变化，行为也往往不会改变。然而，突出的现实世界事件以独特的方式有能力将公共卫生危机推向前沿。为了评估地方公共卫生事件对个人自我报告行为的影响，本文研究了佛罗里达人在佛罗里达州出现首例本地传播的寨卡病毒之前和之后预防寨卡病毒的意愿。我们发现，在美国首例寨卡病毒传播后，当地和全国媒体对寨卡病毒的报道显著增加。至关重要的是，我们还发现，在媒体报道增加后接受调查的佛罗里达人更有可能关注寨卡病毒相关新闻，并自我报告采取保护措施预防该病毒的意愿。这些结果表明，随着健康威胁变得更加迫近，行为意愿可能会发生变化。
