Social Connectedness, Physical Distancing, and Anxiety in Complying with Shelter-In-Place Orders and Advisories during the Once-In-A-Century COVID-19 Pandemic in the US: A Study of Social Media and Internet Users

Dean Kyne (), Candace Robledo, Loren Cliff Clark, Ruby Charak, Meliha Salahuddin and Jay Morrow
Additional contact information
Dean Kyne: Department of Sociology, College of Liberal Arts, University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (UTRGV), Edinburg, TX 78539, USA
Candace Robledo: Department of Population Health & Biostatistics, School of Medicine, University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (UTRGV), Edinburg, TX 78539, USA
Loren Cliff Clark: Department of Population Health & Biostatistics, School of Medicine, University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (UTRGV), Edinburg, TX 78539, USA
Ruby Charak: Department of Psychology, College of Liberal Arts, University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (UTRGV), Edinburg, TX 78539, USA
Meliha Salahuddin: School of Public Health Austin Campus, University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth), Austin, TX 78701, USA
Jay Morrow: Peter O’Donnell Jr. School of Public Health, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, TX 75390, USA

IJERPH, 2022, vol. 19, issue 22, 1-22

Abstract: The severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), which causes coronavirus disease (COVID-19), was first identified in Wuhan, China, in December 2019. As of 20 October 2020, the virus had infected 8,202,552 people, with 220,061 deaths in US, and in countries around the world, over 38 million people have become infected and over one million have died. The virus usually spreads via respiratory droplets from an infected person. At the time of compiling this paper, while countries around the world are still striving to find a “pharmaceutical intervention (PI)”, including treatments and vaccines, they are left with only “non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs)”, such as physical distancing, wearing masks, and maintaining personal hygiene. In the US, all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and five US territories issued mandatory stay-at-home orders between March 1 and 31 May 2020 to lower the risk of virus transmission. This study empirically examined how social connectedness and anxiety interact with shelter-in-place compliance and advisories during the pandemic. The study collected information from 494 adults using an online survey during April and July 2020.

Keywords: social connectedness; anxiety; shelter-in-place; 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/1660-4601/19/22/15282/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/22/15282/ (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:22:p:15282-:d:977479

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 ().