 Risky restrictions? Mobility restriction effects on risk awareness and anxietyJoan Costa-Font and Cristina Vilaplana-Prieto Health Policy, 2022, vol. 126, issue 11, 1090-1102 Abstract: Although mobility restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic were intended to change behaviours by influencing risk awareness, they might have prompted a rise in risk anxiety (‘worry for one's health’) both among individuals exposed to such restrictions and those living in border countries. This paper studies this question by examining survey data from 22 European countries in the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic (March 20th and April 6th 2020). Drawing on an event study analysis we show that COVID-19 mobility restrictions raised individuals COVID-19 risk awareness both in the exposed and border countries for almost a week after the announcement. The spillover effect on border countries accounts for about 67% of the effect in the exposed country. However, mobility restrictions gave rise to an increase in risk anxiety in low-risk countries (which is between 4 and 7 times higher than moderate and high-risk countries). These effects are heterogeneous across age, education and socioeconomic status. Keywords: Risk anxiety; Risk awareness; Pandemics; COVID-19; Event study; Risk policy; Europe (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:hepoli:v:126:y:2022:i:11:p:1090-1102 DOI: 10.1016/j.healthpol.2022.08.009 Access Statistics for this article Health Policy is currently edited by Katrien Kesteloot, Mia Defever and Irina Cleemput More articles in Health Policy from Elsevier |
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