A Preliminary Evaluation of the Public Risk Perception Related to the COVID-19 Health Emergency in Italy

Abstract

Governments faced with the spread of COVID-19 pandemic are adopting strict and severe mitigation measures to influence people’s behaviors. Public perception of health risk plays a key role in the adoption of these actions, in people’s feelings, and in their daily habits. To support decision makers from international to local levels to face with future sanitary emergencies, this study aims at investigating Italian public perceptions of health risk. To this purpose, a questionnaire was designed and administered within the period of Italian COVID-19 lockdown and quarantine to almost 9000 citizens in Italy and abroad. The obtained results highlight a significative influence that mass media play on both the level of knowledge and the feelings of the respondents. The findings also point out future variations of some perceived behaviors consequent to the COVID-19 outbreak.

Knowledge, attitudes and practices about Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) among Birzeit University students: A cross-sectional study

“…These results are in line with the ndings of former studies, which revealed that the mass media is the major source of information about COVID19 and SARS epidemics (Lau et al 2003;Motta Zanin et al 2020). Whereas, other previous studies reported that the majority of participants referred to social media in order to obtain information concerning COVID-19 which is relatively inconsistent with our nding (Giao et al 2020;Bhagavathula et al 2020b;Abdelha z et al 2020;Saqlain et al 2020;Aker and Mıdık 2020).…”

Investigating the Effects of COVID-19 Quarantine on Migraine: Data from the Italian National Headache Registry (RICe)

“…We hypothesize that in northern Italy a reduced negative emotive reaction against the pandemic could be justi ed by the need to maintain normal habits, thus potentially facilitating viral diffusion. These results con rm recent data recorded in almost 9000 Italian citizens during the COVID-19 quarantine, showing a higher negative emotional impact of pandemic in regions less affected by the epidemic [12].…”

Perception of and anxiety about COVID-19 infection and risk behaviors for spreading infection: An international comparison

“…A survey of Italian subjects indicated that a higher level of knowledge was positively associated with the acceptance of strict mitigation measures such as lockdown [21]. If this finding is applicable to people in other countries, people in the UK and Spain would be more supportive of national lockdown policies compared to Japanese because the former populations have higher risk perception and anxiety according to our present findings.…”