Local vs. Social : How Social Information Intensity Shapes Preventive Behavior in the Context of COVID-19

By connecting people across the globe, social technologies enable people to share information instantaneously and experience “in the moment” events virtually. In the context of COVID-19, sharing localized disaster information allows socially connected friends in other non/low affected areas to learn and virtually feel the “disaster”, which in turn can increase their awareness and enhance their preventive behavior, even when they do not face immediate risk. The goal of this paper is to investigate if and to what extent social connectedness influences people’s preventive behavior, while controlling for physical connectivity, which presents an immediate threat to people physically connected to a highly affected area. To this end, we employ two complementary studies and distinguish local and social information channels and measure physical and social information intensity respectively. The stronger the information signals about COVID from information sources and the higher the connectivity, the stronger the information intensity. In Study 1, we find that, after accounting for the physical information intensity which correlates with physical virus transmission risk in the local area or from geographic neighbors, social information intensity about COVID, as measured by the volume of COVID-19 cases or COVID-related Tweets in socially connected areas, can significantly increase people’s preventive behavior in the focal area. Further, the effect of social information intensity is more pronounced for those individuals living in areas with better digital infrastructure. In Study 2, we provide evidence regarding the mechanism of why and how information shared via social technologies help shape preventive behavior. We find that when social information is expressed in a subjective way, it makes people more likely to feel the virus threat “in the moment” and adopt preventive behavior. Furthermore, social information intensity about COVID significantly increases people’s awareness and perceived risk towards COVID, which in turn lead to more preventive behavior. Our additional analysis suggests that social information intensity plays a significant positive role in preventing the spread of COVID-19. Our paper contributes to the emerging literature on how to enhance societal resilience in facing catastrophic events by highlighting the increasingly important role of social technology in shaping public perception and response