An Agenda-Setting Account for Psychological Typhoon Eye Effect on Responses to the Outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan

Shu-Wen Yang; Ming-Xing Xu; Yi Kuang; Yang Ding; Yu-Xin Lin; Fei Wang; Li-Lin Rao; Rui Zheng; Shu Li

doi:10.3390/ijerph20054350

An Agenda-Setting Account for Psychological Typhoon Eye Effect on Responses to the Outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan

Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2023 Feb 28;20(5):4350. doi: 10.3390/ijerph20054350.

Authors

Shu-Wen Yang^{1

2}, Ming-Xing Xu^{1

3}, Yi Kuang⁴, Yang Ding^{1

2}, Yu-Xin Lin⁵, Fei Wang⁶, Li-Lin Rao^{1

2}, Rui Zheng^{1

2}, Shu Li^{2

7}

Affiliations

¹ CAS Key Laboratory of Behavioral Science, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China.
² Department of Psychology, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China.
³ School of Transportation, Fujian University of Technology, Fuzhou 350108, China.
⁴ Department of Psychology, Hubei University, Wuhan 430062, China.
⁵ Department of Management and Organizations, Eller College of Management, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721, USA.
⁶ School of Journalism and Communication, Xiamen University, Xiamen 361005, China.
⁷ Department of Psychology, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Fuzhou University, Fuzhou 350108, China.

Abstract

During the outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan in 2020, we conducted a nationwide survey of 8170 respondents from 31 provinces/municipalities in China via Sojump to examine the relationship between the distance to respondents' city of residence from Wuhan and their safety concerns and risk perception of the epidemic that occurred in Wuhan City. We found that (1) the farther (psychologically or physically) people were from Wuhan, the more concerned they were with the safety of the epidemic risk in Wuhan, which we dubbed the psychological typhoon eye (PTE) effect on responses to the outbreak of COVID-19; (2) agenda setting can provide a principled account for such effect: the risk information proportion mediated the PTE effect. The theoretical and managerial implications for the PTE effect and public opinion disposal were discussed, and agenda setting was identified to be responsible for the preventable overestimated risk perception.

Keywords: agenda setting; psychological typhoon eye effect; risk information proportion; risk perception.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

COVID-19* / epidemiology
China / epidemiology
Cities
Cyclonic Storms*
Disease Outbreaks
Epidemics*
Humans

Abstract

Publication types

MeSH terms

Grants and funding