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. 2021 May:166:120592.
doi: 10.1016/j.techfore.2021.120592. Epub 2021 Jan 13.

The impact of the pandemic declaration on public awareness and behavior: Focusing on COVID-19 google searches

Seung-Pyo Jun  1 , Hyoung Sun Yoo  2 , Jae-Seong Lee  1
Affiliations

The impact of the pandemic declaration on public awareness and behavior: Focusing on COVID-19 google searches

Seung-Pyo Jun et al. Technol Forecast Soc Change. 2021 May.

Abstract

The unprecedented outbreaks of epidemics such as the coronavirus has caused major socio-economic changes. To analyze public risk awareness and behavior in response to the outbreak of epidemic diseases, this study focuses on RSV (Relative Search Volume) provided by Google Trends. This study uses the social big data provided by Google RSV to investigate how the WHO's pandemic declaration affected public awareness and behavior. 37 OECD countries were analyzed and clustered according to the degree of reaction to the declaration, and the United States, France and Germany were selected for comparative study. The results of this study statistically confirmed that the pandemic declaration increased public awareness and had the effect of increasing searches for information on COVID-19 by more than 20%. In addition, this rapid rise in RSV also reflected interest in the COVID-19 test and had the effect of inducing individuals to be tested, which helped identify new cases. The significance of this study is that it provided the theoretical foundation for using RSV and its implications to understand and strategically utilize public awareness and behavior in situations where the WHO and governments must launch policies in response to the outbreak of new infectious diseases such as COVID-19.

Keywords: COVID-19; Coronavirus; Google Trends; Pandemic declaration; Public awareness; Relative search volume.

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Conflict of interest statement

None.

Figures

Fig 1
Fig. 1
Research model.
Fig 2
Fig. 2
Research methodology.
Fig 3
Fig. 3
Scatter plot of RSV duration and change rate in the event week by country.
Fig 4
Fig. 4
Comparison of trends in RSV, new cases, and new deaths in the USA (top), Germany (middle), and France (bottom).
Fig 5
Fig. 5
Scatter plot of total tests (SQ) and RSV change rate in the event week by country.
Fig 6
Fig. 6
Comparison of intervention model predictions and measured values (left) and comparison of non-intervention model predictions (right) – United States.
Fig 7
Fig. 7
Comparison of intervention model predictions and measured values (left) and comparison with non-Intervention model predictions (right) – France.
Fig 8
Fig. 8
Comparison of RSV trends for all COVID-19 related searches and test related searches in the United States (left), Germany (center), and France (right).
Fig 9
Fig. 9
Comparison of weekly new tests (per 1,000 individuals) by country.
Fig 10
Fig. 10
Comparison of the rate of positive confirmed cases by country.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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