Psychological responses, behavioral changes and public perceptions during the early phase of the COVID-19 outbreak in China: a population based cross-sectional survey

Mengcen Qian; Qianhui Wu; Peng Wu; Zhiyuan Hou; Yuxia Liang; Benjamin J Cowling; Hongjie Yu

The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not peer-reviewed) is Second, our results suggest that more responsive behavioral changes observed in this study were associated with the strong involvement from the Chinese government during the control and prevention of coronavirus than voluntary avoidance behaviors reported previously. 5,9,26,27, Measures such as temporary closing down public transportation in Wuhan and imposing punishment for passengers not wearing a face mask on metro in Shanghai have fueled the high compliance rates with government recommendations (Table S1 ) and perceived efficacy of these behaviors (Table S4 ). These polices are also responsible for the limited observed heterogeneity in uptake and changes of precautionary behaviors. For example, we find that no perception variables exerted a statistically meaningful effect on increased face mask wearing frequency (Table S3) .