"The Better You Feel, the Harder You Fall": Health Perception Biases and Mental Health among Chinese Adults during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Peng Nie, Lu Wang, Davide Dragone, Haiyang Lu, Alfonso Sousa-Poza and Nicolas Ziebarth ()
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Lu Wang: Xi’an Jiaotong University

No 14905, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: The health risks of the current COVID-19 pandemic, together with the drastic mitigation measures taken in many affected nations, pose an obvious threat to public mental health. The social science literature has already established a clear link between mental health and sociodemographic as well as economic factors, and a growing number of studies investigate the role of biased risk perceptions. To assess this role in the context of COVID-19, this study first implements survey-based measures of over- and underconfidence in the health self-perceptions among Chinese adults during the pandemic. Then, it analyzes their relation to three mental health outcomes: life satisfaction, happiness, and depression (as measured by the CES−D). We show that the health overconfidence displayed by approximately 30% of the survey respondents is a clear risk factor for mental health problems; it is a statistically significant predictor of depression and low levels of happiness and life satisfaction. We also document that these effects are stronger in regions that experienced higher numbers of confirmed COVID-19 cases and deaths. Recent research has shown that health overconfidence can influence risky behaviors such as smoking and excessive alcohol consumption, which may be particularly detrimental during a pandemic. Our results also offer clear guidelines for the implementation of effective interventions to temper overconfidence, particularly in uncontrollable situations like the COVID-19 pandemic.

Keywords: China; mental health; health perception bias; overconfidence; underconfidence; COVID-19 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I12 I18 P46 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 30 pages
Date: 2021-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cna, nep-hap and nep-hea
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Published - published in: China Economic Review , 2022, 71, 101708

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Journal Article: “The better you feel, the harder you fall”: Health perception biases and mental health among Chinese adults during the COVID-19 pandemic (2022)
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