Experience together online and help each other offline: An exploration of social media co-experience and social identification as predictors of mutual aid behavior during the COVID-19 lockdown

Abstract

Mutual aid behaviors serve as a supplementary public health crisis response, providing essential support to the vulnerable during the COVID-19 lockdown. Although related research has explored the help-giving behavior facing emergency situations, there is a lack of work investigating how social media strengthen the collective psychological process to facilitate the mutual-aid-providing intention. The present study sought to identify how social media co-experience predicts mutual aid behavior during the COVID-19 lockdown by exploring the mediator of the social identification process. A cross-sectional online survey study was conducted in Shanghai during the 3-month COVID-19 lockdown (N=292). We used a series of linear regression analyses to test the relationships. Findings revealed that with the mediating effect of both social collective identification and social relational identification, social media co-experience (including participation, cognitive communion, and resonant contagion) was positively associated with mutual aid behavior. This study thus can be used for voluntary organizations to make corresponding policies to encourage and coordinate mutual aid behavior during public health crises.