The Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) is the deadliest pandemic of this century having the most disseminated outbreak over a wide geographical area. Several reports have confirmed that there could be many starting points for the outbreak of COVID-19, while Chinese Wuhan is the first epicenter of this fatal virus.[1–3]. The increasing number of infected persons caused a severe threat to public health status, including international students living in China. The World Health Organization (WHO) declared the 2019-nCoV outbreak as the sixth emergency public health of global concern [4]. The COVID-19 is considered so destructive and contagious due to its rapid spread from a small city to global community [5, 6].
In order to reduce the rapid spread and adverse health impacts, increasing public awareness in such conditions is of great importance. On January 26, 2020, China initiated level-1 public health response for its 30 provinces [7] which means the provincial headquarters will organize and coordinate the emergency response. They will be working within their administrative territory based on a unified decision disseminated by the State Council during any severe public health emergency. In addition, the Chinese government has been utilizing several communication methods to disseminate and update timely reports and provide preventive advice to the public in such circumstances.
Largely, the success of such initiatives depends on the change of health seeking behaviour and attitudes of the public. The theory of planned behavior, people’s perceptions and behavioral intentions are major critical factors affecting and understanding of their actual behavior [8]. The outcome of these initiatives is somewhat challenging to measure for the non-native people due to many factors like social, cultural, linguistic or building trust. Thus, the need of people’s perceptions, especially the perceptions of international students living in China about COVID-19, is very crucial during the current epidemic situation. That is why; we focused our concentration on significant gaps in knowledge and existing perceptions among them towards this COVID-19 outbreak.
During epidemic conditions, taking preventive measures (such as reducing outdoor activities and wearing N95 masks) can diminish the threat to public health [9]. Along with these, supportive measures taken by the institution can significantly decrease disease contamination. Hence, it is essential to examine the factors associated with the intentions of international students to take up these preventive measures as well as supports provided by their respective institutions to provide safety and satisfaction during epidemic conditions. The following hypotheses are suggested based on the above-mentioned discussion:
H1: Preventive and supportive measures taken by students and/or provided by the respective institution or authorities are positively related to students’ satisfaction.
H2: Preventive and supportive measures taken by students and/or provided by the respective institution or authorities are positively related to gain trust in authorities.
Personnel awareness levels in terms of knowledge concerning health hazards play a significant function in the management of risk communication research. Knowledge theory is a widely used framework for building awareness which indicates that individuals’ response in terms of risk is conditioned by their knowledge level [10]. The better risk knowledge a person possesses, the more appropriate risk judgments can be gained during epidemic situations. A wealth of literature recommends that mass media plays a significant role in disseminating information to enrich public awareness of health and contingent circumstances [11–15]. The more people depend on mass media to get information, the more attention they will pay to the news generated by these media outlets, and thus the more likely their behaviors and attitudes will be changed or strengthened [16, 17]. Moreover, it was also found that the increasing awareness level causes a notable decline in Ebola virus disease transmission [18]. Based on the above discussion, we suggest the following two hypotheses:
H3: Personnel awareness building is positively related to students’ satisfaction.
H4: Personnel awareness building is positively related to gain trust in authorities.
Communication strategy is crucial for controlling the epidemic, affects the consequence of epidemic management, control, and public trust. Epidemic associated information must be conveyed to the citizens in such a way that construct, maintain and restore trust and respect to local cultures and country norms [19, 20]. Therefore, we propose the following hypothesis:
H5: Students’ satisfaction is positively related to gain trust over authorities.
The international student community in China, one of the largest sets in the world, is concerned about the COVID-19 pandemic. During any kinds of pandemic population group like international students are generally afraid of the lack of proper instructions and supports from the relevant duty bearer, which may be family or government or educational institutions etc. Because, they are living in a place where the outbreak has emerged, and far away from their families and country. In addition, they were indulged with a very vulnerable situation as government usually cannot impose such strict policy as they do with their own inhabitants. Again, information regarding such incidents sometimes may pass through some extensive filtration, which can mostly affect the satisfaction and trust as well. So, there is a stronger ground of research on how the Chinese government handles this dilemmatic situation with the help of preventive, supportive, and awareness building mechanisms. In addition, very limited information is in place that can profoundly trigger linkages between these variables and make some substantial recommendations for other countries to make use of awareness-building improvements through preventive and supportive measures. As the international student community is not well aware of strict internal policies and is mostly managed by their institutions, our current research aims to bridge the gap in research on how the preventive, supportive and awareness-building mechanism triggers the level of satisfaction of international students in the face of this Covid-19 pandemic. In the course of our study, we refer a set of regulatory materials such as prevention leaflets, usage guidelines of preventive tools and materials, daily supply list of food, and other hygienic materials with the full supports from the College of International Educations of investigated Universities. Moreover, the researchers also rendered their efforts to form and actively observe several International groups via various social media platforms like WeChat, web no, QQ, and especially WhatsApp and Facebook to gather authentic sources of information regarding satisfaction level. The evaluation could be essential for other countries and future but ethical research as it comprises some mostly used factors that render preventive, supportive, and awareness building mechanisms.