ArticleFrontiers in psychology2020
Risk Perception and Protective Behaviors During the Rise of the COVID-19 Outbreak in Italy.
Article in Frontiers in psychology, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 71 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
71 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Risk Perception towards COVID-19: A Systematic Review and Qualitative Synthesis.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2022Pooled it
- Beyond COVID-19: Behavioral Drivers of Pandemic Prevention in Ghana's Informal Urban Settlements.Journal of urban health : bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine · 2026Article
- Mediating mechanisms and urban diversity: How environmental risk perception shapes recycling behavior in China's megacities.iScience · 2026Article
- A new experimental approach to manipulate social identity and social norms about protective behaviors in a virtual social environment.BMC psychology · 2026Article
- Emotions, preventive measures, and risk perception in post-emergency COVID-19: a cross-sectional study in Italian university staff during the seasonal vaccination campaign.BMC public health · 2026Article
- Short report: association between self-reported COVID-19 experience and contemptuous beliefs about pandemic management among German citizens and healthcare professionals.Journal of public health (Oxford, England) · 2026Article
- From compliance to risk: A paradigm for nursing and midwifery regulation in Ireland.Journal of nursing regulation · 2026Article
- Article
- Digital risk perception among middle-aged and older adults in China: a perspective from mobile phone dependence within the I-PACE model.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2026Article
- Using Behaviour Change Frameworks and Bayesian Network Modelling to Support Marine Biosecurity Practices: A New South Wales Waterways Case Study.Environmental management · 2025Article
- Securely stressed: association between attachment and empathic stress in romantic couples.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Understanding the interplay between epidemiological and social cognitve drivers of behaviour change during the Covid-19 pandemic.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Investigating Post-COVID-19 Risk Perception and Preventive Behaviour Among Individuals in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.Cureus · 2025Article
- Perceptions of COVID-19 and HIV Risk and Related Preventive Health Behaviors in Rural Zambia.Journal of prevention (2022) · 2025Article
- Perception of Risk for Developing Severe Illness or Complications from COVID-19 in Brazil: Focus on Factors Linked to Socially Vulnerable Populations, 2020-2023.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2025Article
- Understanding the social and cognitive influences on the adoption of COVID-19 non-pharmaceutical interventions: a survey of a Saudi Arabian sample.Frontiers in public health · 2025Article
- Article
- How disease threat affects the purchase intention of ultra-processed foods among high-pressure workers.Frontiers in nutrition · 2025Article
- Emergence of shield immunity during spatial contagions.Npj complexity · 2025Article
- The role of personality traits and emotional intelligence in the evaluation of the benefits and costs of social distancing during a pandemic outbreak.Scientific reports · 2024Article
11 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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Authors and funding
2 authors.
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Abstract
Risk perception is important in determining health-protective behavior. During the rise of the COVID-19 epidemic, we tested a comprehensive structural equation model of risk perception to explain adherence to protective behaviors in a crisis context using a survey of 572 Italian citizens. We identified two categories of protective behaviors, labeled promoting hygiene and cleaning, and avoiding social closeness. Social norms and risk perceptions were the more proximal antecedents of both categories. Cultural worldviews, affect, and experience of COVID-19 were the more distal predictors. Promoting hygiene and cleaning was triggered by the negative affective attitude toward coronavirus and mediated by an affective appraisal of risk. The deliberate dimension of risk perception (perceived likelihood) predicted only avoiding social closeness. Social norms predicted both types of behaviors and mediated the relations of cultural worldviews. Individualism (vs. communitarianism), more than hierarchy (vs. egalitarianism), shaped the affective evaluation of coronavirus. The model was an acceptable fit to the data and accounted for 20% and 29% of the variance in promoting hygiene and cleaning, and avoiding social closeness, respectively. The findings were robust to the effect of sociodemographic factors (age, gender, education, socioeconomic status, and zone of the country). Taken together, our findings confirmed the empirical distinction between affective and deliberate processes in risk perception, supported the validity of the affect heuristic, and highlighted the role of social norms as an account for why individualistic people were less likely to follow the prescribed health-protective behaviors. Implications for risk communication are discussed.
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