How COVID-19 Triggers Our Herding Behavior? Risk Perception, State Anxiety, and Trust
Open Access
- 15 February 2021
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Frontiers Media SA in Frontiers in Public Health
- Vol. 9, 587439
- https://doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2021.587439
Abstract
People have felt afraid during the outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), because a virus is an invisible enemy. During the pandemic outbreak, society has become worried about the spread of infections and the shortage of protective equipment. This common fear among the public subsequently deepens each person's fear, increasing their belief in the content reported by the media and thus actively compelling these individuals to engage in the behavior of panic buying. In this study, we explored the effects of the public's risk perception, state anxiety, and trust in social media on the herding effect among individuals. The study was based on an online questionnaire survey and convenience sampling. The results showed that the public's risk perception increased their state anxiety and then deepened their willingness to wait in line for a purchase. In addition, the more people that trust the message delivered by the media, the more actively they will join the queue to buy goods. This study also found that anxiety had a greater impact on the public's willingness to wait for a purchase than trust in social media. Therefore, the top priority for the government should be to reduce the public's state anxiety and then reduce the herding effect.Keywords
This publication has 17 references indexed in Scilit:
- They all do it, will you? Event-related potential evidence of herding behavior in online peer-to-peer lendingNeuroscience Letters, 2018
- The Use of Cronbach’s Alpha When Developing and Reporting Research Instruments in Science EducationResearch in Science Education, 2017
- Predicting the effects of eWOM and online brand messaging: Source trust, bandwagon effect and innovation adoption factorsTelematics and Informatics, 2017
- Effects of Medical Disputes on Internet Communications of Negative Emotions and Negative Online Word-of-MouthPsychological Reports, 2015
- Hayes, Andrew F. (2013). Introduction to Mediation, Moderation, and Conditional Process Analysis: A Regression‐Based Approach. New York, NY: The Guilford PressJournal of Educational Measurement, 2014
- Does Flow Experience Lead to Risk? How and for WhomApplied Psychology: Health and Well-Being, 2013
- Lay perceptions of the pandemic influenza threatEuropean Journal of Epidemiology, 2009
- Yesterday’s dinner, tomorrow’s weather, today’s news? US newspaper coverage of food system contributions to climate changePublic Health Nutrition, 2009
- Predicting e-services adoption: a perceived risk facets perspectiveInternational Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 2003
- What Determines Trust in Information About Food‐Related Risks? Underlying Psychological ConstructsRisk Analysis, 1996