The COVID-19 came into sight in Wuhan just one month prior to the spring festival of China and a huge population movement during this period caused significant challenges for prevention and controlled the spread of infections. Therefore, it spreaded rapidly from Hubei to whole China. The COVID-19 can spread from human to human, and no effective drug or vaccine has been invented yet. The most efficient preventive and control ways are to identify suspected and confirmed patients and virus transporters and prevent the transmission via isolation, disinfection, and personal protection. Hence, increasing protective measures and awareness levels is vital to control and reduce the high trend rate of infection during this epidemic.
In our study, the analytical method produced robust results and confirmed that the students’ satisfaction found as a meaningful partial mediator. The results from the PLS-SEM analyses showed that a large amount of the variance in the endogenous construct trust (80%) is explained by the three constructs of preventive and supportive measures taken by students and respective authorities, personal awareness-building and students’ satisfaction. Trust over government has long been considered as a vital factor of citizens’ compliance with public health policies, particularly during epidemic conditions. This is in line with the previous study of Blair et al. [26].The study found that supportive measures and policies taken by the Liberia government to control the Ebola virus disease epidemic were positively associated with gaining public trust over authorities.
In terms of the strength of the relationships, the PLS-SEM model revealed a strong and significant relationship between preventive and supportive measures taken by students and/or provided by the respective institution or authorities which leads to trust in authorities (0.381) (Figure 2; Table 4). This could be due to the central and local governments of China have already taken a series of drastic measures. Firstly, Chinese health authorities performed an urgent investigation to characterize and control the disease, together with isolation of suspected patients, examining of clinical contact status of the patients, and developing diagnostic and treatment processes [27]. Moreover, on January 23, 2020, the local authorities of Wuhan declared the suspension of all kinds of public transportation, including highways, bus stations, railway stations and airports in the city, preventing further disease transmission. Consequently, most provinces in China declared a “Level I Emergency Response” by adopting a series of measures, for example, suspending all kinds of public transportation and setting up community isolations. In addition, the list of the first-level authorized hospitals was announced, and training for epidemic prevention to primary medical staff started early on. As fever is one of the typical clinical symptoms for this infection, temperature detection in entry and exit points of railway stations, bus stands and other public places have been implemented comprehensively to screen suspected cases as early as possible. Furthermore, many other compulsory measures controlling population mobility, for instance, cancellation of mass gatherings, online school teaching, work-from-home arrangements, were taken to decrease within-population contact rates [5].
According to the strength of relationships, the PLS-SEM model revealed a strong and significant relationship between personal awareness level and gained trust in authorities (0.13) (Figure 2; Table 4). The reason behinds this is, the Chinese government tried to increase the public awareness level to control the spread of infection by publicizing regular updates about surveillance and active cases on different websites as well as social media [8]. Increasingly, psychologists and psychiatrists using the internet and social media (e.g., WeChat, Weibo, etc.) to distribute strategies for dealing with psychological stress. For instance, experts from Peking University Sixth Hospital of China made several suggestions for the general people to manage mental stress. These involved judging the accuracy of information disclosed, developing social support systems (e.g., friends and families), eradicating stigma linked with the epidemic, maintaining a healthy life under safe conditions, and using the psychosocial service system, mainly telephone- and internet-based counselling for health-care staff, infected patients, family members and the public [28].
Satisfaction depends on whether one has sympathy for what the authorities do and whether one thinks what the authorities are doing is good for society. Trust and satisfaction are vital predictors of trust. In our results, the strength of the relationship between students’ satisfaction and trust in authorities was 0.42 (Figure 2; Table 4). The possible reason behind this may be that the international students living in China during this period found their respective authorities doing their best to control this epidemic and trying to keep them safe from becoming infected. Several other studies also concluded that a positive relationship exists between satisfaction and trust over the government [29,30].
Despite our sincere efforts, our study has some limitations. It is possible that communal desirability apprehensions can lead the responses to our questionnaire with some extend of misperception. We reduced these concerns by avoiding the use of a brief discussion and pilot test. Moreover, our findings are not considered identical because the respondents of our study are only foreign students. Most notably, we found some extensive-expression of conspiracy belief in our prospective set of respondents who has some extend of obligatory for the institutions and authorities. So, there might be some biased responses. We tried to minimize this by a close discussion with some respondents and compiled those in our analysis. The linkage between satisfaction and trust in terms of such epidemics has limited empirical pieces of evidence, and the interconnection is relatively complex. Lastly, future researchers should investigate whether these findings vary in various situations or formats. In this study, we do not test these variants in fear of losing focus on our core objectives and it also could lead theoretically assorted treatment based on sources satisfaction and trust. Moreover, these might have needed more critical statistical analysis. Notwithstanding these limits, this is the first study on COVID-19 which used SEM to assess behaviour change. We contribute to the broader literature on the coronavirus outbreak by stating two aspects.