Effect of socioeconomic differences on COVID-19 preventive behavior among working adults in India

Purpose: The outbreak of the new coronavirus has caused tremendous concerns to public health, which are impacting human lives both physically and psychologically The rise in coronavirus cases has led to the propagation of control measures for its prevention This study aims to investigate the factors enhancing the coronavirus preventive behavior among the respondents Design/methodology/approach: To understand the coronavirus preventive behavior, the study is based on the value–belief–norm (VBN) theory Data for the study has been collected through a survey of 319 respondents in New Delhi, India The study uses structural equation modeling (SEM) to understand the factors impacting preventive behavior For analysis, the study uses SEM to examine direct and indirect relationships and Hayes’ PROCESS macro SPSS module for moderating effects Findings: The results show that egoistic values have a negative impact on belief while altruistic values have a positive impact on the belief about the coronavirus outbreak Belief is recorded to have a positive and significant impact on preventive behavior Also, personal norms positively mediate the relationship between belief and preventive behavior Additionally, the impact of awareness of preventive behavior is positively moderated by the symptomatic profile Furthermore, the interaction effect is found to be conditioned positively with age and level of education Originality/value: To the best of the authors’ knowledge, no other work in the existing literature was found to apply the VBN theory to determine coronavirus preventive behavior Further, the extensive moderation analysis done in this study is expected to be a significant contribution to the literature © 2020, Emerald Publishing Limited