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Updated: Dec 11, 2025

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Published on: November 10, 2023
The Relationship between Risk Event Involvement and Risk Perception during the COVID-19 Outbreak in China
Background:
The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a worldwide pandemic that continues to spread and the situation continues to deteriorate globally. It is also a risk event for the public in affected areas. However, little is known about the relationship between "being involved/exposed in a risk event at the moment" and people's risk perception of that event.
Methods:
The mediation model and analysis of covariance method were performed on a Chinese sample (N = 351) during the outbreak of COVID-19 to test the underlying mechanism between risk event involvement and risk perception.
Results:
Risk event involvement was positively related not only to people's event-related risk perception but also their general risk perception (i.e. risk perception towards other events), and negative emotion mediated these relationships. In addition, the residents of Wuhan (vs. non-Wuhan) exhibited significantly higher event-related risk perception as well as general risk perception.
Conclusions:
The findings deepen our understanding of risk perception by suggesting that being involved in a risk event at the moment is also a nonnegligible variable positively related to risk perception through increased negative emotion. Finally, theoretical and managerial implications of the result are discussed.
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