Relationship between Phobic Anxiety in Work and Leisure Activity Situations, and Optimistic Bias Associated with COVID-19 among South Koreans

Young-Jae Kim and E-Sack Kim
Additional contact information
Young-Jae Kim: Department of Physical Education, Chung-Ang University, Seoul 06974, Korea
E-Sack Kim: Department of Physical Education, Chung-Ang University, Seoul 06974, Korea

IJERPH, 2020, vol. 17, issue 22, 1-12

Abstract: Because of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the public is unable to maintain a proper balance between work and leisure, and an increase in community-based infections is causing severe phobic anxiety. Therefore, the present study investigated the differences in phobic anxiety between work and leisure activities according to optimistic bias among 533 South Korean citizens. Frequency analysis, descriptive statistical analysis, t -tests, and a one-way analysis of variance were conducted to examine the data. The results showed that for leisure activities, women showed a higher perception of phobic anxiety. In addition, the group showing high optimistic bias had a higher perception of phobic anxiety in both work and leisure activity situations. Therefore, support measures to lower phobic anxiety among women are needed at the government level, while support and interest from family members are needed at home. Moreover, local governments must ensure active involvement to mitigate phobic anxiety among individuals, and measures are needed to more actively implement infectious disease prevention behaviors.

Keywords: COVID-19; South Korean; phobic anxiety; optimistic bias; work; leisure activity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/17/22/8436/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/17/22/8436/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:17:y:2020:i:22:p:8436-:d:445060

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().