Public Exposure to Live Animals, Behavioural Change, and Support in Containment Measures in response to COVID-19 Outbreak: a population-based cross sectional survey in China

Zhiyuan Hou; Leesa Lin; Liang Lu; Fanxing Du; Mengcen Qian; Yuxia Liang; Juanjuan Zhang; Hongjie Yu

Our study has several limitations. First, there may be recall bias. We aimed to identify behavioral changes in a cross-sectional survey, and outcomes before the outbreak were measured based on participant recall. Second, our results may be affected by selection bias from telephone survey. We did attempt multiple calls to unanswered numbers to mitigate this bias, and quota sampling was introduced to get a representative sample. The anonymous phone interview addressed the concern of response bias due to fear of being seen as criticizing the government. Third, a cross-sectional design prevents us from assessing how long the effect on behavioral/intention change demonstrated in this study will last, when the outbreak is no longer fresh in people's minds. Thus, we plan to conduct a second-round survey at the end of the outbreak to track the long-term changes.