To explore the combined effects of fear and collectivism on people's preventive intention towards COVID-19, the present study analysed the Sina Microblog texts of 108,914 people. By using multivariate linear regression analysis, we found that there is an interaction between fear and collectivism on people's preventive intention towards COVID-19. Fear and collectivism reduce each other's positive influence on people's preventive intention. Furthermore, a Johnson–Neyman slope test shows that when collectivism exceeds a certain level, the predictive effect of fear on people's preventive intention towards COVID-19 shifts from positive to negative.
The positive relationship between collectivism and preventive intention in this study verifies the role of culture in the epidemic outbreak as speculated in the pathogen epidemic hypothesis. An investigation during the COVID -19 pandemic showed that the facemask use rate measured in airport settings was the highest in Asia (46%) and the lowest in the USA (2%)[5], This may be related to the local cultural orientation, previous studies of cross-cultural psychology have shown that compared with western societies where individualism prevails, especially in the USA, Asia is more inclined to collectivism[48, 49].
The interaction of fear and collectivism on people's preventive intention can be explained by combining the pathogen epidemic hypothesis and the cognitive resource theory. A previous study has found that collectivism can provide people with adequate psychological protection, thus enabling people to resist better negative emotions caused by disasters such as epidemics[28]. Correspondingly, the cognitive resource theory indicated that the psychological action of resisting negative emotions consumes a lot of cognitive resources[50].
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the people's resistance to fear and the improvement of their preventive intention towards COVID-19 are both considered cognitive activities. Such activities need to consume or invoke cognitive resources, including collectivism. Conversely, higher collectivism helps people resist fear better, thus reducing the promoting effect of fear on their preventive intention towards COVID-19. Conversely, the increase of fear consumes more cognitive resources, including collectivism. Therefore, the promoting effect of collectivism on the preventive intention of COVID-19 is reduced. In sum, collectivism and fear weaken each other's role in the promotion of people's preventive intention towards COVID-19.
It is worth noting that people who are high in collectivism may not adopt more prevention measures because of the higher effectiveness of mental protection. Furthermore, the increase of fear will consume more cognitive resources and shall reduce people's preventive intention accordingly. When people have already built a psychological defence system towards the COVID-19 pandemic, the increase of fear shall have negative influences on both the preventive intention and mental health of people.
Although fear in some cases is a limited contributor to people's preventive intention, we should not ignore its adverse effects on both individuals and society. Previous studies have found that people's fear is significantly and positively correlated with harmful psychological conditions, such as depression and anxiety[51]. During the COVID-19 pandemic, many people became suspicious that they were infected by the virus and therefore took their own lives—despite the autopsy results showing that they were physically normal[52, 53]. Negative emotions such as fear may devastate people's mental health, so we recommend that governments take timely measures to deal with negative public psychology during and after the COVID-19 pandemic, such as to use cognitive behavior therapy to treat public's depression and anxiety[54].
The COVID-19 pandemic has caused substantial negative impacts on many countries and regions around the world[55]. A common concern lies in the promotion of people's preventive intention and pushing people to maintain a positive psychological state. Based on the social media big data of 108,914 active Microblog users, the study finds that the interaction of collectivism values and fear indeed affects people's behavioural intentions. The results have some implications for the current pandemic control work.
The promotion of fear on people's preventive intention may be limited and conditional, and values of collectivism can well compensate for the promotion of fear on preventive intention. Since fear may have a lasting negative impact on individuals, it is not advisable to promote preventive intention among people by arousing fear. On the one hand, we call on governments to timely dispel people's fear and reduce social panic. On the other hand, we suggest that relevant departments conduct targeted publicity to promote people's preventive intention through the establishment of a collectivist concept of health. For example, 'Keeping social distance can protect you and your family from infection' may be a more effective communication strategy than 'Keeping social distance can protect you from infection'.
Our research has certain limitations, as well. First, there may be a sampling error. Among the users of Microblog, there are more young people than older people, and most of the participants came from urban areas instead of rural areas. Second, we only considered the cultural heterogeneity within China. The cross-cultural generalisation of the conclusion needs to be further verified. Third, the current analysis and interpretation are limited to a correlation level only. The causal relationship between variables cannot be determined yet. Further studies can build more sophisticated models to explore the causal relationship between cultural values, fear, and the prevention intention towards pandemics.