The Association of Social Emotions, Perceived Efficiency, Transparency of the Government, Concerns about COVID-19, and Confidence in Fighting the Pandemic under the Week-Long Lockdown in Shenzhen, China

Xiaozhe Peng, Jiajun Huang, Kaixin Liang and Xinli Chi ()
Additional contact information
Xiaozhe Peng: School of Psychology, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen 518060, China
Jiajun Huang: School of Psychology, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen 518060, China
Kaixin Liang: School of Psychology, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen 518060, China
Xinli Chi: School of Psychology, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen 518060, China

IJERPH, 2022, vol. 19, issue 18, 1-17

Abstract: The outbreak and spread of the COVID-19 pandemic have had a far-reaching impact. The present study investigated the factors primarily affecting the execution of the control measures, including social emotions, concerns about the pandemic, perceived efficiency, transparency of the government in publishing the pandemic-related information, and confidence in fighting the pandemic. Specifically, we examined the differences in these factors across four areas (i.e., lockdown area, control area, prevention area, and safe area) according to different COVID control measures under the week-long lockdown in Shenzhen. We found that social emotions, concerns about the pandemic, perceived efficiency of the government, and confidence in fighting the pandemic were more negative in the lockdown area than that in other areas. More importantly, after controlling for areas and education level of participants, the emotion of optimism, concerns about the COVID-19 pandemic, perceived efficiency, and perceived transparency of the government in releasing COVID-19 relevant information positively predicted confidence in fighting the pandemic, while anger negatively predicted confidence in fighting the pandemic. Therefore, the government and communities could make efforts at effective communication and find innovative approaches to make individuals (especially in the lockdown area) maintain social connections, reduce negative emotions, and enhance confidence in combating the pandemic.

Keywords: social emotions; concerns about COVID-19; perceived efficiency and transparency of the government; confidence in fighting COVID-19 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/18/11173/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/18/11173/ (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:19:y:2022:i:18:p:11173-:d:907843

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 ().