The Mediating Role of Human Mobility in Temporal-Lagged Relationships Between Risk Perception and COVID-19 Dynamics...

The COVID-19 pandemic has profoundly impacted all aspects of human life for over 3 years. Understanding the evolution of public risk perception during these periods is crucial. Few studies explore the mechanisms for reducing disease transmission due to risk perception. Thus, we hypothesize that changes in human mobility play a mediating role between risk perception and the progression of the pandemic.

The study aims to explore how various forms of human mobility, including essential, nonessential, and job-related behaviors, mediate the temporal relationships between risk perception and pandemic dynamics.

We used distributed-lag linear structural equation models to compare the mediating impact of human mobility across different virus variant periods. These models examined the temporal dynamics and time-lagged effects among risk perception, changes in mobility, and virus transmission in Taiwan, focusing on two distinct periods: (1) April-August 2021 (pre-Omicron era) and (2) February-September 2022 (Omicron era).

In the pre-Omicron era, our findings showed that an increase in public risk perception correlated with significant reductions in COVID-19 cases across various types of mobility within specific time frames. Specifically, we observed a decrease of 5.59 (95% CI -4.35 to -6.83) COVID-19 cases per million individuals after 7 weeks in nonessential mobility, while essential mobility demonstrated a reduction of 10.73 (95% CI -9.6030 to -11.8615) cases after 8 weeks. Additionally, job-related mobility resulted in a decrease of 3.96 (95% CI -3.5039 to -4.4254) cases after 11 weeks. However, during the Omicron era, these effects notably diminished. A reduction of 0.85 (95% CI -1.0046 to -0.6953) cases through nonessential mobility after 10 weeks and a decrease of 0.69 (95% CI -0.7827 to -0.6054) cases through essential mobility after 12 weeks were observed.

This study confirms that changes in mobility serve as a mediating factor between heightened risk perception and pandemic mitigation in both pre-Omicron and Omicron periods. This suggests that elevating risk perception is notably effective in impeding virus progression, especially when vaccines are unavailable or their coverage remains limited. Our findings provide significant value for health authorities in devising policies to address the global threats posed by emerging infectious diseases.