Role of media coverage in mitigating COVID-19 transmission: Evidence from China

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2020.120435Get rights and content

Highlights

  • media coverage is associated with a reduction in the numbers of COVID-19 cases and close contacts.

  • effect of media coverage on COVID-19 transmission was mediated by population mobility.

  • number of cases and close contacts are related, with a stronger correlation early in the pandemic.

Abstract

This paper evaluates the impact of COVID-19 media coverage in mitigating its spread in China during the early phase of the pandemic. We construct a provincial-level dataset on COVID-19 and link it with population mobility data, among other control variables, to estimate how media coverage mitigates the spread of COVID-19. Seemingly unrelated regressions are used to examine the simultaneous impact of media coverage on the number of new cases and close contacts. The results show that the effect of media coverage on COVID-19 transmission in China had an inverse-U curvature and was mediated by within- and across-province population mobility. Our simulation results indicate that COVID-19 media coverage in China was associated with a potential reduction of 394,000 cases and 1.4 million close contacts during January 19 and February 29, 2020. Our results also provide strong support for the use of contact tracing in mitigating COVID-19 transmission.

Keywords

COVID-19
China
Media coverage
Contact tracing
Population mobility

Cited by (0)

Dr. Ning Liu is an Assistant Professor of Management in the School of Management at Lanzhou University, China. His research interest focuses on economic and policy analysis of healthcare including health insurance, health care reform and hospital management. He has a PhD in management and an MD degree, as well as work experience in healthcare and finance sectors.

Dr. Zhuo (Adam) Chen is Associate Professor of Health Policy and Management, College of Public Health, University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia, USA; and Visiting Professor in Health Economics and Director (Academics) of Centre for Health Economics, School of Economics, University of Nottingham Ningbo China. He earned his PhD in Economics and MS in Statistics from the Iowa State University. His works have been published in Health Economics, Journal of Health Economics, Genetics in Medicine, Social Science & Medicine, and Mortality and Morbidity Weekly Report. He is a recipient of the US CDC Excellence in Social and Behavioral Science Research Award in 2013. Dr. Chen's ORCID profile is available at https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5351-3489.

Professor Guoxian Bao is the Honorary Dean and Professor of Management in the School of Management at Lanzhou University, China. His research focuses on theory of public administration and government performance.

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