Development and cross-national investigation of a model explaining participation in WHO-recommended and placebo behaviours to prevent COVID-19 infection

Abstract

To protect themselves from COVID-19, people follow the recommendations of the authorities, but they also resort to placebos. To stop the virus, it is important to understand the factors underlying both types of preventive behaviour. This study examined whether our model (developed based on the Health Belief Model and the Transactional Model of Stress) can explain participation in WHO-recommended and placebo actions during the pandemic. Model was tested on a sample of 3346 participants from Italy, Japan, Poland, Korea, Sweden, and the US. It was broadly supported: objective risk and cues to action showed both direct and indirect (through perceived threat) associations with preventive behaviours. Moreover, locus of control, decision balance, health anxiety and preventive coping moderated these relationships. Numerous differences were also found between countries. We conclude that beliefs about control over health and perceived benefits of actions are critical to the development of interventions to improve adherence to recommendations.

Cues to action, perceived risk, perceived benefits, perceived obstacles and executed safety behavior of preventing monkeypox infection among PLWH : a structural equation model

“…Cues to action of the recent increase in monkeypox infection cases and the higher mortality rate among PLWH than other populations had a positive impact on executed safety behavior. There is relatively little research on the correlation between action clues and monkeypox prevention behavior, but there is more research on prevention behavior in other diseases, and it has a good positive impact on prevention behavior, which is consistent with the results of this study [40,41]. Perceived risk of monkeypox infection among PLWH had a positive impact on executed safety behavior [42].…”

Illness anxiety predicts higher mental strain and vaccine willingness—A nine‐wave longitudinal study during the first 1.5 years of the COVID‐19 pandemic in Germany

“…Because individuals with higher illness anxiety have been shown to perceive the COVID‐19 pandemic as more dangerous (Sica et al., 2021; Yalçın et al., 2022), it is particularly plausible to assume that their vaccine willingness is higher. This assumption is embeddable in the theoretical framework of the Health Belief Model (Klosowska et al., 2022; Mertens et al., 2022; Shmueli, 2021). The Health Belief Model postulates that the probability of health behaviours (e.g., receiving a vaccination) is motivated by perceived susceptibility/vulnerability, perceived severity, perceived benefits, and perceived barriers (see Figure 1).…”