IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/osf/osfxxx/3u54z.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Emotional responses to COVID-19 stressors increase avoidance of health information and access to care

Author

Listed:
  • Gustafson, Christopher R.

    (University of Nebraska-Lincoln)

  • Brooks, Kathleen R.
  • Meerza, Syed Imran Ali
  • Yiannaka, Amalia

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic, like other crises, has had direct and indirect impacts on people’s lives, many of which have been negative. However, there is little evidence about how COVID-19 affects decision-making. Emotional responses to COVID-19- related stressors, such as local cases and income loss, provide a pathway for these stressors to affect decision-making. In this study, we examine linkages between exposure to COVID-19-related stressors—focusing on temporally specific local case counts and loss of income due to the pandemic—and behaviors for important health decisions with both individual (accessing health care) and societal (accessing information about antimicrobial resistance (AMR)) relevance. In the analysis of two health behaviors that use data from 1) a custom AMR survey and 2) the U.S. Census’s Household Pulse Survey, which asked about accessing healthcare, we find that exposure to COVID-19 stressors significantly increases feelings of hopelessness. Higher levels of hopelessness are associated with an increased probability of avoiding health information about AMR and foregoing or delaying needed medical care. Mediation analysis confirms that hopelessness is an important pathway through which COVID-19-related stressors affect avoidance behaviors. Our results suggest that large- scale crises may diminish action on other important personal and societal health issues facing humanity through emotion-mediated changes in decision-making.

Suggested Citation

  • Gustafson, Christopher R. & Brooks, Kathleen R. & Meerza, Syed Imran Ali & Yiannaka, Amalia, 2023. "Emotional responses to COVID-19 stressors increase avoidance of health information and access to care," OSF Preprints 3u54z, Center for Open Science.
    • Handle: RePEc:osf:osfxxx:3u54z
    DOI: 10.31219/osf.io/3u54z
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://osf.io/download/63d409c634869300bf0b535d/
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.31219/osf.io/3u54z?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Michele Di Maio & Valerio Leone Sciabolazza, 2021. "Conflict exposure and health: Evidence from the Gaza Strip," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 30(9), pages 2287-2295, September.
    2. Meerza, Syed Imran Ali & Brooks, Kathleen R. & Gustafson, Christopher R. & Yiannaka, Amalia, 2021. "Information avoidance behavior: Does ignorance keep us uninformed about antimicrobial resistance?," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 102(C).
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Alloush, Mo & Bloem, Jeffrey R., 2022. "Neighborhood violence, poverty, and psychological well-being," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 154(C).
    2. Áine Regan & Sharon Sweeney & Claire McKernan & Tony Benson & Moira Dean, 2023. "Consumer perception and understanding of the risks of antibiotic use and antimicrobial resistance in farming," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 40(3), pages 989-1001, September.
    3. Syed Imran Ali Meerza & Sabrina Gulab & Kathleen R. Brooks & Christopher R. Gustafson & Amalia Yiannaka, 2022. "U.S. Consumer Attitudes toward Antibiotic Use in Livestock Production," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(12), pages 1-20, June.
    4. Dominic Rohner, 2022. "Conflict, Civil Wars and Human Development," Cahiers de Recherches Economiques du Département d'économie 22.08, Université de Lausanne, Faculté des HEC, Département d’économie.
    5. Piero Ronzani & Wolfgang Stojetz & Nadine Stammel & Maria Boettche & Diego Zardetto & Sarah Fenzl & Maen Salhab & Jessica M. Anderson & Arden Finn & Alia Aghajanian & Tilman Brück, 2024. "Prevalence of Depression and Associated Socio-economic Outcomes during Violent Conflict: A Matched Analysis for Palestine Using Nationally Representative Survey and Conflict Event Data," HiCN Working Papers 410, Households in Conflict Network.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:osf:osfxxx:3u54z. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: OSF (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://osf.io/preprints/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.