Willingness to Self-Isolate When Facing a Pandemic Risk: Model, Empirical Test, and Policy Recommendations

• Published in: International journal of environmental research and public health Vol. 17; no. 1; p. 197
• Main Authors: Zhang, Xiaojun, Wang, Fanfan, Zhu, Changwen, Wang, Zhiqiang
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Switzerland MDPI AG 27.12.2019; MDPI
• Subjects: Adolescent; Adult; Aged; Asian People - psychology; Asian People - statistics & numerical data; Attitude to Health; Behavior; China; Disease prevention; Education; Female; Gender; Health Policy; Humans; Male; Middle Aged; Pandemics; Pandemics - statistics & numerical data; Perceptions; Quarantine - psychology; Quarantine - statistics & numerical data; Questionnaires; Risk Factors; Self-Management - methods; Surveys and Questionnaires; Swine flu; Young Adult; China; United States > US; Guangdong China; planned behavior; pandemic risk; self-isolation
• ISSN: 1660-4601; 1661-7827; 1660-4601
• DOI: 10.3390/ijerph17010197

Infected people are isolated to minimize the spread of pandemic diseases. Therefore, the factors related to self-isolation (SI) should not be neglected, and it is important to investigate the factors leading the infected (or possibly infected) people to choose to self-isolate. In this paper, we tried to show that the theory of planned behavior provides a useful conceptual framework for SI when facing a pandemic risk, and a regression method with Chinese provincial (Guangdong Province) data was applied to investigate how attitude (ATT), subjective norms (SN), and perceived behavioral control (PBC) influence SI when facing a pandemic emergency. The results and the robustness tests confirm that ATT, SN, and PBC have a significant positive influence on SI when facing a pandemic emergency. ATT plays the most important role, followed by SN and then PBC. Based on the factors of SI, we found, through theoretical and empirical analyses, at least three important aspects that local governments need to consider to encourage citizens to self-isolate when facing a pandemic.