Nonlinear effects of pandemic uncertainty on depression, pandemic preventive behavior intentions, and positive life attitudes: Moderating effects of high and low uncertainty grouping.

Backgrounds: COVID-19 is difficult to end in a short time and people are still facing huge uncertainties. Since people's lives are gradually returning to normal, the sense of control and intolerance of uncertainty, which were mainly focused by past studies, are not specific to COVID-19 and will be more influenced by some factors unrelated to the pandemic. Therefore, they may be difficult to accurately reflect the individuals' perceptions of uncertainty. Besides, past research just after the outbreak mainly investigated people in high levels of uncertainty, we don't know the impact of uncertainties on individuals' psychological states when people gradually recovered their sense of control. To solve these problems, we proposed the concept of "pandemic uncertainty" and investigated its impact on people's daily lives. Methods: During October 20, 2021 to October 22, 2021, this study obtained data about uncertainty, depression, positive attitude, pandemic preventive behavior intentions, personality, and social support from 530 subjects using convenient sampling. The subjects were all college students from the Dalian University of Technology and Dalian Vocational and Technical College. According to the distribution of uncertainty, we divided the dataset into high and low groups. Subsequently, by using uncertainty as the independent variable, the grouping variable as the moderating variable, and other variables as the control variables, the moderating effects were analyzed for depression, positive attitude, and pandemic preventive behavior intentions, respectively. Results: The results showed that the grouping variable significantly moderate the influence of uncertainty on positive attitude and pandemic preventive behavior intentions but had no significant effect on depression. Simple slope analysis revealed that high grouping uncertainty significantly and positively predicted positive attitude and pandemic preventive behavior intentions, while low grouping effects were not significant. Conclusion: These results reveal a nonlinear effect of pandemic uncertainty on the pandemic preventive behavior intentions and positive life attitudes and enlighten us about the nonlinear relationship of psychological characteristics during a pandemic.

Getting COVID-19: Anticipated negative emotions are worse than experienced negative emotions.

OBJECTIVE: When people think about negative events that may occur in the future, they tend to overestimate their emotional reactions, and these "affective forecasts" can influence their present behavior (Wilson and Gilbert, 2003). The present research examined affective forecasting for COVID-19 infection including the associations between emotions and preventive intentions and behavior. METHODS: In two studies, we compared individuals' anticipated emotions and recalled emotions for COVID-19 infection. Study 1 asked college students (N = 219) and Study 2 asked general adults (N = 401) to either predict their emotions in response to a future COVID-19 infection or to recall their emotions associated with a previous infection. RESULTS: In both studies, reliable differences in negative emotions emerged. Those who were predicting their feelings associated with a future infection anticipated more negative emotion than those who were recalling their feelings associated with a past infection reported. Greater negative emotion in both studies was significantly associated with being more likely to have been vaccinated as well as higher intentions to get the booster vaccine. CONCLUSIONS: These findings suggest that compared to those who have had a COVID-19 infection, those who have not yet experienced infection anticipate they will experience greater negative emotion, and this may have implications for preventive behaviors. In general, these findings suggest that people may have an impact bias for COVID-19 infection.

Behavioral Intentions and Factors Influencing Nurses' Care of COVID-19 Patients: A Cross-Sectional Study.

Objective: Behavioral intentions to care for patients with infectious diseases are crucial for improving quality of care. However, there have been few studies of the behavioral intentions and factors influencing patient care by clinical nurses during the COVID-19 pandemic. This study aims to explore cognition, attitudes, subjective norms, self-efficacy, and behavioral intentions of clinical nurses while caring for COVID-19 patients and to explore any influencing factors. Method: A cross-sectional survey was conducted of nurses through convenience sampling in southeast China from February 2020 to March 2020. The questionnaire was developed based on the theory of planned behavior and self-efficacy. Results: A total of 774 nurses completed the survey. Of these, 69.12% (535/774) reported positive behavioral intentions, 75.58% (585/774) reported a positive attitude, and 63.82% (494/774) reported having the confidence to care for patients. However, the lack of support from family and friends and special allowance affected their self-confidence. Attitude, self-efficacy, subjective norms, and ethical cognition were significantly positively correlated with behavioral intentions (r = 0.719, 0.690, 0.603, and 0.546, respectively, all P < 0.001). Structural equation model showed that self-efficacy, attitude, ethical cognition, and subjective norms had positive effects on behavioral intentions (ß = 0.402, 0.382, 0.091, and 0.066, respectively, P < 0.01). The total effect of behavioral intentions was influenced by attitude, ethical cognition, self-efficacy, and subjective norms (ß = 0.656, 0.630, 0.402, and 0.157, respectively, P < 0.01). In addition, ethical cognition had a positive mediating effect on behavioral intentions (ß = 0.539, P < 0.001). Conclusion: The study results indicated that attitude, ethical cognition, and self-efficacy were the main factors influencing nurses' behavioral intention. Efforts should be made to improve nurses' attitude and self-efficacy through ethical education and training to increase behavioral intentions to care for patients with infectious diseases, which will improve the quality of nursing care.

Associations between COVID-19 risk perceptions, behavior intentions and worry

BACKGROUND Risk perceptions are central to health behavior, but some types of risk perceptions may be more strongly connected to behavior than others. This research examined different risk perceptions of COVID-19 and their respective associations with behavior intentions and worry. PARTICIPANTS AND PROCEDURE U.S. college students (N= 248) and general adults (N= 300) reported their risk perceptions of COVID-19 - including absolute numerical, verbal, comparative, and feelings of risk - as well as their worry and intentions to do things such as get vaccinated. RESULTS Although most risk perceptions related to intentions and worry, feelings of risk were the most strongly and consistently related. The associations showed that the higher people's feelings of risk were, the greater were their intentions and worry. CONCLUSIONS Assessing feelings of risk of COVID-19 may provide the best insight into people's perceived threat of this virus.

Research on the path choice behavior of donated materials under major epidemics

Purpose: In the face of major disasters, the Chinese people's willingness to donate has increased and the result is that the donation paths have increased. However, there are certain differences in the choice of donation paths for different types of individuals. It is crucial to pay more attention to the attitude and donation path selection of donors and propose strategies to promote individual donation behavior. The purpose of this study is to propose a conceptualized moderated mediation model for testing the linkage between individual attitude and donation path selection through the mediating effect of donors' behavioral intention and the moderating effect of behavioral difficulty perception or social pressure between donors' attitude and their donation path selection. Design/methodology/approach: Based on a questionnaire survey of 628 community workers during COVID-19 in China. Self-reported measures were used to obtain data on IA, BI, SP, BDP and DPS. Survey data were used to test the proposed model using hierarchical regression analysis. Mediation analyses with bootstrap via PROCESS were used to ascertain the proposed relationship. Findings: The results showed that individual attitude are positively related to donation path selection. Moreover, this study finds that behavioral intention serves as a mediator in the relationships between individual attitude and donation path selection. The social pressure and behavioral difficulty perception negatively moderate the relationship between individual attitude and behavioral intention. Research limitations/implications: There are still some shortcomings in this study: First, although the data collected at multiple points in this study are all individual data. Future research can add evaluations of relatives, friends or colleagues to individual scheduling of survey subjects to reduce homology errors. Second, although this study has verified the mediating role of the opposite sex, some of the mediating results show that there may be other variables that play a role in the relationship between individual attitudes and donation path selection. In the research on path selection, the integrated theoretical perspective has rich connotations but has not attracted enough attention from the academic community. This research is only based on this single theoretical perspective to construct, verify and explain the model, and there should be other integrated theories. The fit point can be used to analyze the influence mechanism of individual attitudes on the choice of donation path. Practical implications: First of all, we must deepen our understanding of the connotation and role of individuals' attitudes. In the event of a major epidemic, the following two types of measures will be taken to improve individuals' attitudes toward specific donation paths: First, the sponsors of each donation should do their best to donors and provide more information about donations, because the more information resources they have, the stronger the experience of the corresponding donation path, and the more they will choose the path. The sponsor of the second donation must show concern for major epidemics that are prone to occur and a desire to help people affected by disasters, so as to enhance the emotional identity of the donor, thereby increasing the probability of the donor choosing a specific donation path. Secondly, donation sponsors should be wary of the negative influence of social pressure on the donation path selection of individual donors. Donation sponsors can train individuals who are willing to donate, guide them in social relations, online public opinion and other pressure methods and improve the possibility of individuals choosing specific donation routes. Social implications: Deepen the understanding of the content and effectiveness of the behavioral difficulty perception that has a profound impact on the donor. The greater the tendency to make a path choice is often affected by the individual's perception of the difficulty of behavior. The perception of difficulty of a certain d nation path will cause the individual to retreat and inhibit the possibility of the individual choosing the path. Therefore, donation sponsors should take all measures to make their own donation channels simpler and more efficient, thereby reducing the individual's perception of the difficulty of donation behavior. Originality/value: Drawing on TPB theory, a theoretical framework is constructed that specifies the process through which individual attitude affects donation path selection to expand collective understandings of individual attitude in the donation context. Furthermore, the boundary conditions of the underlying process are investigated, which further enhances the contribution of this paper to the extant literature on individual attitude. © 2022, Emerald Publishing Limited.