Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on rural communities: a cross-sectional study in the Sichuan Province of China

Abstract

ObjectiveRecently, China has experienced a considerable influence of the COVID-19 pandemic on the local people’s health and economy. Hence, the current research aims to investigate the psychological and socioeconomic impact of COVID-19 on rural communities in the Sichuan Province of China.MethodsA total of 499 participants (village representatives of Sichuan Province) were approached to partake in a cross-sectional online survey and share their experience regarding the ongoing pandemic. The descriptive statistics and ordinary least squares (OLS) regression were used to analyse the data.ResultsOur analysis revealed that the pandemic has significantly affected local people psychologically, leading to socioeconomic vulnerability. Notably, we find that local households are worried about their income losses regardless of their socioeconomic status (40%–43%), level of income (37%–43%) and industry involvement (38%–43%). However, as income increases, the level of stress decreases. The results further show that government transfer payment is a significant factor in reducing stress due to its reliable and uninterrupted income flow. Contrary to our proposition, the pandemic stress was less observed, which might be because of people’s trust in government and effective antiepidemic countermeasures to contain the disease.ConclusionThis study finds that COVID-19 has a significant impact on local people’s health, psychology and income. This study is one of the first to provide empirical evidence regarding the early health and socioeconomic effects of COVID-19 at the household level in rural communities, which are very important to devise policies to ease the outbreak and prevent further losses at the local community level.

Factors associated with prevention practices against COVID-19 in the Peruvian population: Disparities between rural and urban areas

“…These practices may vary according to rurality [ 12 ], due to the fact that in rural areas, there is less purchasing power and less access to health and social services [ 13 , 14 ]. In addition, in rural areas, sociocultural factors, greater informal commercial activity and larger households could modify compliance with preventive measures compared to urban areas [ 9 ], since these characteristics could condition a greater need to obtain economic income during restrictive measures [ 15 , 16 ].…”

Covid-19 Impact on Agricultural Farmer’s Social, Physical, and Mental Health: A Literature Review

“…This review found that six articles (Bossenbroek & Ftouhi, 2021;Cevher et al, 2021;Fang et al, 2021;Landry et al, 2021;Quandt et al, 2021;Shafi et al, 2021) described the effect of pandemic on mental health in farmers such as anxiety, fear, worry, depression, stress and substance use disorders. Psychological problems during COVID-19 can be directed by the impact of the disease, restriction that lead to limited access to social support facilities and uncertainty and stress resulting from loss jobs and livelihoods (Semo & Frissa, 2020).…”

“…The review found that farmers face a mental health problems such as anxiety (Bossenbroek & Ftouhi, 2021;Cevher et al, 2021;Fang et al, 2021), Fear, worry (Quandt et al, 2021), depression (Fang et al, 2021) stress (Shafi et al, 2021), substance use disorders (Landry et al, 2021).…”

Análisis del perfil sociodemográfico y clínico de personas derivadas a una Unidad de Salud Mental durante el principio de la pandemia por COVID-19 en España

“…A pesar de ello, el tipo de áreas de residencia no parecen considerarse un elemento que regule la afectación de la COVID-19 en la salud mental de la población, al igual que otras características como el número de personas convivientes (Pinedo et al, 2021). En este caso, más de la mitad de la muestra proviene de áreas rurales, lo que indica que también ha existido un impacto en la salud mental de la población de estas áreas durante el periodo de tiempo de la pandemia, resultando coincidente con un estudio realizado en Sichuan (China) (Shafi et al, 2021), en el que no existe una tendencia de la población rural a considerar la pandemia causante directa de su malestar emocional.…”