Exploring the Impacts of Preventative Health Behaviors with Respect to COVID-19: An Altruistic Perspective

This study aims to explore the impact of gender and anxiety on various preventative health behaviors, and the relationships among these preventative health behaviors, individual well-being and depression, from the perspective of altruism. This study employed an online questionnaire survey, and 136 males and 204 females participated in the survey. The results of this study showed that females exhibited better preventative health behaviors than males, including hygiene habits, social distancing and behaviors intended to help others mitigate the epidemic. Anxiety regarding COVID-19 infection encouraged individuals to adopt hygienic habits and social distancing measures rather than to help others mitigate the epidemic. Hygiene habits improved the individual’s psychological well-being. Helping others mitigate the epidemic improved the individual’s psychological well-being and social well-being and contributed to reducing individual depression. However, the preventative health behavior involved in social distancing was not conducive to emotional well-being or social well-being. Affective elements are related to individual behaviors. Therefore, the use of prosocial, altruistic language may play an important role with respect to encouraging people to comply with preventative health behaviors in the context of COVID-19. In addition, it is worth noting that different preventative health behaviors may have different effects on people’s mental health, especially when implementing social distancing-related epidemic mitigation behaviors. The question of how to prevent negative psychological effects in restricted actors must be answered, and the degree of life satisfaction experienced by those actors must also be taken into account.