A Study on the Public’s Crisis Management Efficacy and Anxiety in a Pandemic Situation—Focusing on the COVID-19 Pandemic in South Korea

Jae-Eun Lee and Seol-A Kwon
Additional contact information
Jae-Eun Lee: Department of Public Administration, Chungbuk National University, Cheongju 28644, Korea
Seol-A Kwon: National Crisisonomy Institute, Chungbuk National University, Cheongju 28644, Korea

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 13, issue 15, 1-17

Abstract: Social distancing, shutdown, and lockdown policies have recently been implemented worldwide to help slow the spread of the Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), which has caused economic, social, and cultural crises on a global scale. To help create safe communities, we aimed to analyze the factors affecting the public’s anxiety and efficacy to overcome crises. The results show that efficacy is associated with sex, education, central government support, the public hygiene environment, and public hygiene behaviors. Anxiety was shown to have a negative relationship with central government support, a positive relationship with civilian support, and a negative relationship with efficacy. For a country to prevent the spread of a novel infectious disease, alleviate the anxiety of the population, and construct a safe community in the midst of a global pandemic, active central government support and response, protection of vulnerable populations, publicization of policies, and crisis management communication are essential. In particular, identifying an evidence-based method to understand and address the psychological and social influences of COVID-19, such as excessive fear and discrimination, providing insight into risk factors associated with future society for policy makers, and establishing potential and sustainable public health communication strategies are of paramount importance.

Keywords: COVID-19; pandemic; crisis management; efficacy; anxiety (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/15/8393/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/15/8393/ (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:jsusta:v:13:y:2021:i:15:p:8393-:d:602775

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

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