Rationality of 17 cities'public perception of SARS and predictive model of psychological behavior

This study investigated the feature of Chinese peoples?perception of SARS by surveying a stratified sample of 4231 people from 17 cities in China, and primarily pro-posed a risk perception centered predictive model of psy-chological behavior in crisis. The results indicated that, negative SARS-related information, especially informationof personal interest, will arouse peoples risk perception ofhigh level, and lead to irrational nervousness or scare; but positive SARS-related information, including recovery in-formation and that with measures taken by government, can decrease the level of risk perception. In the middle of May, people felt the highest level of risk on the SARS pathogens; the following are the physical health condition and infectiv-ity after recovering from SARS; they are factors that needspecial attention. SEM result analyses supported our hy-potheses in that SARS-related information affect people抯coping behavior and mental health through their riskperception, the four indices of risk assessment, feeling ofnerv- ousness, coping behavior and mental health areeffective presentimental indices for public psychological behavior in risky events.