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Viral social media videos can raise pro-social behaviours when an epidemic arises

Guo, Y.; Shachat, J.; Walker, M.J.; Wei, L.

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Authors

Y. Guo

L. Wei



Abstract

Access to information via social media is one of the biggest differentiators of public health crises today. During the early stages of the Covid-19 outbreak in January 2020, we conducted an experiment in Wuhan, China to assess the impact of viral social media content on pro-social and trust behaviours and preferences towards risk taking with known and unknown probabilities. Prior to the experiment, participants viewed one of two videos that had been widely and anonymously shared on Chinese social media: a central government leader visiting a local hospital and supermarket, or health care volunteers transiting to Wuhan. In a control condition, participants watched a neutral video, unrelated to the crisis. Viewing one of the leadership or volunteer videos leads to higher levels of pro-sociality and lesser willingness to take risks in an ambiguous situation relative to the control condition. The leadership video, however, induces lower levels of trust. We provide evidence from two post-experiment surveys that the video’s impact on pro-sociality is modulated by influencing the viewer’s affective emotional state.

Citation

Guo, Y., Shachat, J., Walker, M., & Wei, L. (2021). Viral social media videos can raise pro-social behaviours when an epidemic arises. Journal of the Economic Science Association, 7(2), 120-138. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40881-021-00104-w

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Aug 16, 2021
Online Publication Date Sep 1, 2021
Publication Date 2021-12
Deposit Date Aug 26, 2021
Publicly Available Date Sep 15, 2021
Journal Journal of the Economic Science Association
Print ISSN 2199-6776
Electronic ISSN 2199-6784
Publisher Springer
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 7
Issue 2
Pages 120-138
DOI https://doi.org/10.1007/s40881-021-00104-w
Public URL https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1266035

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Publisher Licence URL
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Copyright Statement
Advance Online Version Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.





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