Country/Region Level Pandemic Severity Moderates the Relationships among Risk Experience, Perceived Life Satisfaction, and Psychological Distress in COVID-19

Yi-Hui Christine Huang; Jie Sun; Ruoheng Liu; Jennifer Lau; Qinxian Cai

doi:10.3390/ijerph192416541

Author(s)

Related Research Unit(s)

Department of Media and Communication

Detail(s)

Original language	English
Article number	16541
Journal / Publication	International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health
Volume	19
Issue number	24
Online published	9 Dec 2022
Publication status	Published - Dec 2022

Link(s)

DOI	DOI https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph192416541 Final Published version
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Attachment(s)	Documents 123797807.pdf Final Published version, 1.27 MB, PDF Publisher's Copyright Statement This full text is made available under CC-BY 4.0. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Link to Scopus	https://www.scopus.com/record/display.uri?eid=2-s2.0-85144560955&origin=recordpage
Permanent Link	https://scholars.cityu.edu.hk/en/publications/publication(68c39a09-cd2c-4099-b1aa-ee09663f1cc2).html

Abstract

Scholars and communications practitioners worldwide have sought novel resilience models amid heightened rates of psychological distress caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. We examined perceived life satisfaction as a determinant of resilience. Additionally, we investigated the assumption that perceived pandemic severity at the country/region level moderates structural relationships within our risk–resilience model. Analyzing more than 34,000 valid samples from 15 countries/regions, we found that (1) perceived life satisfaction alleviated psychological distress across all 15 countries/regions; and (2) country/region-level pandemic severity moderated the relationships among COVID-19 symptom experience, perceived life satisfaction, and psychological distress. The effects of COVID-19 symptom experience and perceived life satisfaction on psychological distress were conditional. We discuss possible mechanisms behind our findings and provide practical implications for mitigating psychological distress during public health crises.