Extending the Theory of Planned Behavior to understand residents’ coping behaviors for reducing the health risks posed by haze pollution

Abstract

Haze pollution threatens residents' health and has become an important public problem in China. With the gradual improvement of public environment consciousness, government failure in the environmental protection might stimulate individual coping behaviors. However, there is no implication about the mechanism differences within individual coping behaviors. This study aimed to understand Beijing residents' four coping behaviors against health risks of haze pollution including two behaviors of "inverted quarantine," i.e., wearing a mask when go outside (WM), purchasing air purifier (PAP), and two environmentally friendly behaviors, i.e., purchasing new energy vehicles (PNEV), making a real-time report of air pollution incidents to the government (MRR). We introduced risk perception and income into the theory of planned behavior, and used structural equation model to explore the formation mechanism of coping behaviors. The results showed that the positive effect of intention on behaviors of "inverted quarantine" is relatively higher than these environmentally friendly behaviors. Behavioral intentions are significantly affected by attitude (β WM = 0.24; β PAP = 0.37; β PNEV = 0.45; β MRR = 0.16), subjective norm (β WM = 0.46; β PAP = 0.41; β PNEV = 0.31; β MRR = 0.62) and risk perception (β WM = 0.74; β PAP = 0.73; β PNEV = 1.07; β MRR = 0.74) at 1% level. Furthermore, richer people showed higher level of coping behaviors than the poor, but showed similar or lower level of coping behavioral intentions. The conclusions would be helpful for policy makers to take effective measures to guide public behaviors and promote public participation in air pollution control.

The Effect of Perceived Threats and Response Efficacy on Adaptation to Smog: An Instrumental Variables Design

“…In this study, we used randomized exposure of study participants to the smog warning as an instrument to measure the impacts of threat perception and response efficacy perception on adaptation to smog episodes. The results show that the perception of threats has a positive effect on adaptation to smog, confirming thus the findings of previous studies on this topic (Ban et al., 2017; Covey et al., 2019; Johnson, 2012; Qin et al., 2020; Xu et al., 2020). As mentioned before, the interaction between threat perception and response efficacy perception remains an issue largely unexplored by research on adaptation to air pollution.…”

“…Studies using the PMT as the theoretical framework have shown that an increase in the perceptions of air pollution level and susceptibility to this hazard is positively associated with protection behaviors such as wearing masks, reducing physical efforts and staying indoors during periods of acute air pollution (Ban, Zhou, Zhang, Brooke Anderson, & Li, 2017; Covey et al., 2019; Johnson, 2012; Qin et al., 2020; Xu et al., 2020). The perception of response efficacy is equally found to have a positive effect on adaptation to air pollution (Covey et al., 2019; Lin & Bautista, 2016).…”

Modeling of Food Consumption Behavior in the Quarantine Period Applied during the Coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) Outbreak in Turkey

“…While 43% of the respondents chose contactless payments, 42% chose credit cards, and 15% chose cash as the least preferred method of payment. With or without cash, quarantine is an unexpected period for people and their budget [39]. A total of 56% of consumers said that they exceeded their food expenditure budget during the COVID-19 quarantine period.…”

On the dynamics emerging from pandemics and infodemics

“…Risks are made up of a multiplicity of qualitative and subjective attributes (Jenkin 2006;Slovic et al 1981;Xu et al 2020). 2 However, risk-perception is also a sociocultural phenomenon: It is affected by the structure of networks between individuals (e.g., social networks, organizations) and the resulting world views (Gore et al 2009;Sjöberg 2000;Marris et al 1998).…”