| The Coronavirus Disease 2019(COVID-19)has been the longest-lasting,most widespread,and most influential public health event in recent years.Because of the sudden,persistent,and destructive nature of the epidemic,it can easily provoke the public stress,and can also greatly challenge the capacity of government agencies to respond to such public health even.In the process of responding to large public health events,in addition to the need for authorities to develop effective measures,the public’s trust in authorities and the public’s own cooperative behavior are also important foundations for achieving victory in epidemic prevention and control.For example,in the COVID-19 outbreak,without the cooperation of the public for regular nucleic acid testing,designated quarantine or transport,and voluntary personal protection,epidemic prevention and control would be impossible.In addition,in the context of COVID-19,related extended events such as problems with living materials and quarantine arrangements also continue to occur,and the public’s responsibility attribution for these events and the individual’s own social value orientation will also influence their behavior.Therefore,this study hopes to explore the influence of authority trust on public cooperative behavior in the context of COVID-19,and further explore its influence mechanism from the perspective of responsibility attribution as a cognitive factor and social value orientation as an individual trait factor,in order to provide a reference for better layout of response strategies for public health emergencies.Three studies were used in this paper to examine the relationship between authority trust and public cooperative behavior.Study 1 was a survey study that investigated 365 subjects to examine the levels of authority trust,responsibility attribution,and cooperative behavior in a realistic context.The results found that(1)authority trust positively predicted the level of cooperative behavior;(2)responsibility attribution mediated the effect of authority trust on cooperative behavior(the "detection and quarantine" dimension),initially validated the theoretical model using responsibility attribution as a mediator.Study 2 was an experimental study with a one-way betweensubjects design in which the level of authority trust(high and low)was manipulated through different contextual descriptions to test the effect of authority trust on responsibility attribution and cooperative behavior.In addition,because an individual’s own value orientation can also influence his or her final behavioral performance by regulating the individual’s processing of situational information,a measure of social value orientation was added to further improve the theoretical model.Study 2 collected233 valid data,including 102 in the high authority trust group and 131 in the low authority trust group.The results found that(1)the influence of authority trust on responsibility attribution was significant,and members of the high authority trust group,compared to the low authority trust group,were significantly less likely to attribute responsibility for the occurrence of negative events to the authority;(2)authority trust had a great influence on cooperative behavior,and the level of cooperative behavior was higher in the high authority trust group than in the low authority trust group;(3)responsibility attribution played a mediating role in the influence of authority trust on cooperative behavior;(4)the path of responsibility attribution affecting cooperative behavior was moderated by social value orientation.Study 3 was an experimental study with a three-factor between-subjects design that simultaneously manipulated authority trust and responsibility attribution and measured social value orientation to further clarify the separate effects and interactions of these three variables on cooperative behavior.A total of 402 valid data were collected.The results found that(1)authority trust could influence public’s cooperative behavior,the level of cooperation behavior in the high authority trust group was higher than that in the low authority trust group;(3)responsibility attribution also could affect public’s cooperative behavior,and the level of cooperative behavior of subjects in the high responsibility attribution group was lower than that in the low responsibility attribution group;(4)social value orientation could affect cooperative behivor,pro-social individuals have a higher level of cooperative behavior to pro-ego indiciduals;(5)there was a interaction between responsibility attribution and social value orientation on cooperative behavior,in the low responsibility attribution case,there was no difference in cooperative behavior between the two types of subjects,while in the high responsibility attribution case,proego individuals had lower cooperative behavior than pro-social individuals.In summary,this study found that the "trust effect" was prominent under the epidemic situation,i.e.,authority trust could positively predict the level of public cooperative behavior,and improving authority trust through intervention could help improve public cooperation behavior.In addition,when negative events occur,attributions of responsibility to authorities could negatively predict public cooperative behavior,and reducing the public’s responsibility attribution to authorities through intervention could improve public cooperative behavior.In an integrated view,trust in authority could increase public cooperative behavior by reducing the level of public responsibility attribution on negative events,i.e.,the more the public trusted authority,the less they attributed negative events to authority’s mishandling or competence problems,and the more they exhibited cooperative behavior.In addition,the path of responsibility attribution on cooperative behavior was also moderated by social value orientation,as pro-social individuals had higher and more stable levels of cooperative behavior and were less influenced by responsibility attribution,while pro-ego individuals’ cooperative behavior increased as the level of responsibility attribution decreased. |
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