State Key Laboratory of Pollution Control and Resource Reuse, School of the Environment, Nanjing University, Xianlin Campus, 163 Xianlin Avenue, Nanjing, 210023, China.
Nanjing University (Suzhou) High-Tech Institute, Suzhou, 215123, China.
Sci Rep. 2023 Mar 30;13(1):5165. doi: 10.1038/s41598-023-32009-5.
COVID-19 pandemic provides an opportunity to investigate how a new and long-lasting threat affects public risk perception and social distancing behavior, which is important for pandemic risk management and recovery of the tertiary industry. We have found that the mechanism that perception decides behavior changes over time. At the beginning of the pandemic, risk directly shapes people's willingness of going out. But under a persistent threat, perception no longer plays the direct role of shape people's willingness. Instead, perception indirectly influences the willingness by shaping people's judgment about the necessity of traveling. Switching from direct to indirect influence, perception's effect is enlarged, which partially prevents people from returning to normal life even if the governmental ban is removed in a zero-COVID community.
新冠疫情大流行提供了一个机会，可借此研究新的、持久的威胁如何影响公众的风险感知和社会疏离行为，这对于大流行风险管理和第三产业的恢复很重要。我们发现，感知决定行为的机制会随时间而变化。在疫情开始时，风险直接影响人们外出的意愿。但是，在持续的威胁下，感知不再直接影响人们外出的意愿。相反，感知通过塑造人们对出行必要性的判断，间接地影响人们外出的意愿。感知的影响从直接影响转变为间接影响，其作用被放大，这部分阻止了人们即使在零新冠社区取消政府禁令后也恢复正常生活。
