RAPID: A Multinational Analysis of Factors that Determine the Effectiveness of COVID-19 Warning Messages

新型冠状病毒疫情于2019年底爆发，并于2020年初席卷地球仪，对多个国家的国民健康、繁荣及福利造成重大问题。官方信息来源必须在及时提供信息以消除谣言的需要与准确性的需要之间取得平衡。随着越来越多的工作人员无法工作，这一点变得越来越成问题。因此，社区中有时会出现意想不到而且往往是无益的风险观念。这降低了对公务员、急救人员、医疗和科学界以及彼此的信任和信心。这项快速反应研究（RAPID）旨在确定影响社区对Covid-19大流行的理解（规范）以及对关键利益相关者和保护行动的态度的刺激因素。通过比较中国和韩国，研究人员将能够确定影响社区风险感知和态度发展的刺激因素。研究结果将对如何制定更有效的灾害相关政策产生影响。这项研究也将有更好地支持公众的信心，信任，并遵守与关键公务员，如当地的第一反应和应急管理，以及医疗和科学community.The研究设计的通信的影响是基于观察，在危险的情况下，意想不到的风险感知有时会出现由于观察到的社会线索和官方信息之间的冲突。另一方面，“涌现规范”有时充当关系调节者，平衡社区风险认知、官方信息和对公务员信任之间的冲突。该项目将社会规范相关的主持人引入一个既定的理论框架-保护性行动决策模型（PADM）-以更好地预测公共政策和信息背景下的保护性行为。将使用混合方法方法--依赖于结构化调查响应的定性内容分析和多元统计分析--来测试假设的调节效应。混合方法将通过确保分析结果与经历隔离的个人提供的丰富文本描述的关系进行检查，从而限制虚假因果关系的影响。样本框架中的两个国家（中国和韩国）采取了一系列政策变量，这些变量将被纳入调查数据集，以进行分析比较和得出与政策相关的结论。该小组将根据保护行动决策模型进行调查，该模型描述了环境背景和心理过程如何共同预测个人防范或减轻风险的倾向。具体而言，该项目将产生关于官方和非官方信息如何相互作用以影响人们的保护行为的基本理解，这将对决策者如何制定更有效的信息和公共政策以帮助保持社区安全产生影响。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估而被认为值得支持。

The Covid-19 pandemic, which emerged in late 2019, swept the globe in early 2020 causing significant problems for national health, prosperity, and welfare across many nations. Official information sources had to balance the need to provide timely information to dispel rumors against the need for accuracy. This became increasingly problematic as increasing numbers of staff became unable to work. As a consequence, unexpected and often unhelpful perceptions of risk sometimes emerged in communities. These reduced trust and confidence in public servants, first-responders, the medical and scientific communities, and each other. This Rapid Response Research (RAPID) study aims to determine the stimuli that influence community understanding (norms) associated with the Covid-19 pandemic as well as attitudes towards key stakeholders and protective actions. By comparing China, which was amongst the most stringently locked-down countries, and South Korea, which issued restrictions and guidance, rather than formally locking-down, the researchers will be able to identify the stimuli that influence community risk perception and attitudinal development. The findings will have implications for how to shape disaster-related policies to be more effective. The research will also have implications for communications that better support public confidence, trust in, and compliance with key public servants such as local first responders and emergency management, and the medical and scientific communities.The research design is based on the observation that, in hazardous situations, unexpected risk perceptions sometimes emerge due to conflict between observed social cues and official information. On the other hand, “emergent norms” sometimes act as relationship moderators, balancing the conflicts between community risk perception, official information, and trust in public servants. This project introduces social-norm related moderators into an established theoretical framework - the Protective Action Decision Model: PADM – in an effort to better predict protective behaviors in the context of public policies and messages. A mixed-methods approach -- relying upon both qualitative content analysis and multivariate statistical analysis of structured survey responses -- will be used test the posited moderator effects. The mixed-methods approach will limit the influence of spurious causal relationships by ensuring the analytic results are examined in relationship to rich, textual accounts provided by individuals experiencing quarantine. The two countries in the sample frame (China and South Korea) undertook a range of policy variants, which will be incorporated into the survey data set for analytic comparison and policy-relevant findings. This team will conduct surveys based upon the Protective Action Decision Model, which describes how environmental context and psychological processes together predict an individual's tendency to protect against or mitigate for risks. Specifically, the project will yield fundamental understanding about how official and unofficial messages interact to affect peoples' protective behaviors, which will have implications for how decision makers can craft more effective messages and public policies to help keep communities safer.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.