The Moderating Effect of COVID-19 Risk Perception on the Relationship Between Empathy and COVID-19 Volunteer Behavior: A Cross-Sectional Study in Jiangsu, China

The health system has encountered great challenges since the COVID-19 outbreak, volunteers are urgently needed in every situation during this crisis. The current study aimed to explore the relationship between empathy and COVID-19 volunteer behavior, along with the moderating role of COVID-19 risk perception in the above relationship. The cross-sectional survey was conducted online using Wenjuanxing from February 12th to March 16th, 2021, in Jiangsu, China. A total of 1,486 participants completed the Toronto Empathy COVID-19 volunteer behavior and COVID-19 risk perception questionnaires. The SPSS PROCESS macro was yielded to examine the moderating effect. Simple slopes analysis was conducted to detect the associations between empathy and COVID-19 volunteer behavior at three levels of the COVID-19 risk perception. The Johnson-Neyman (J-N) technique was used to calculate where the moderating effect is significance. Results showed that empathy was positively related with COVID-19 volunteer behavior (beta= 0.080, p < 0.001). COVID-19 risk perception played a moderation effect on association between empathy and COVID-19 volunteer behavior (beta = -0.005, p < 0.001), the greater the levels of COVID-19 risk perception, the weaker the associations between empathy and COVID-19 volunteer behavior. The J-N test showed the association between empathy and COVID-19 volunteer behavior was no longer significant when values of COVID-19 risk perception was >10.71. Current findings could enlighten researchers and policy makers, that fostering volunteerism among public during crisis situation through arousing more empathy and reducing unnecessary risk perception of the public.