Preventive behaviors by the level of perceived infection sensitivity during the Korea outbreak of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome in 2015

Lee, Soon Young; Yang, Hee Jeong; Kim, Gawon; Cheong, Hae-Kwan; Choi, Bo Youl

However, no matter how much actively the media communicates with the people, it would not be able to promote preventive behaviors if the government has failed to secure the transparency and credibility of infection control. In this study, similar to other studies, policy credibility was not high, which was speculated to be due to a failure in early countermeasures [21] . Policy credibility raises people's perception of the reliability of preventive behaviors and elevates the practice of preventive behaviors. While perceived infection sensitivity also functions as a factor to increase the practice of preventive behaviors, there was no or little correlation between policy credibility and infection sensitivity in this study. In other words, policy credibility was determined by factors other than perceived infection sensitivity, and it was speculated that policy credibility affected the attitude towards preventive behaviors, independent of sensitivity. In or-der to prepare a strategy to promote preventive behaviors against infection, there should be further analysis of the factors that determine infection sensitivity and policy credibility.