Home Quarantine Behavior in College Students: The Internal Mechanism and Cross-National Differences

Xiantong Yang,1,* Jia Wang,2,* Ru-De Liu,1 Yi Ding,3 Wei Hong,1 Yi Yang,1 Jacqueline Hwang3 1Beijing Key Laboratory of Applied Experimental Psychology, National Demonstration Center for Experimental Psychology Education (Beijing Normal University), Faculty of Psychology, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, 100875, People’s Republic of China; 2Teachers’ College, Beijing Union University, Beijing, 100874, People’s Republic of China; 3Graduate School of Education, Fordham University, New York, NY, 10023, USA*These authors contributed equally to this workCorrespondence: Ru-De Liu, Email rdliu@bnu.edu.cnBackground: The COVID-19 pandemic motivated people to stay at home to reduce the risk of COVID-19 infection and community transmission, but limited research has investigated the behavioral mechanisms underlying home quarantine.Methods: Based on the theory of planned behavior (TPB), this study explored the mediating role of intention toward home quarantine and the moderating role of nationality among attitude, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control. A total of 827 college students from the United States and China were recruited to complete an online survey.Results: The results of structural equation modeling showed that antecedents (ie, attitude, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control) could predict actual home-quarantine behavior through the role of intention. Notably, the relation between both attitude and intention and perceived behavioral control and intention were moderated by nationality. Specifically, attitude was a stronger predictor of intention for American participants than for Chinese participants; however, perceived behavioral control was a stronger predictor of intention for Chinese participants.Conclusion: These findings reveal the internal mechanism of home-quarantine behavior and the heterogeneous explanations attributed to cultural diversity during the pandemic, which not only expands the application of TPB but also provides a reference for infectious disease mitigation in the field of public health policy.Keywords: COVID-19, home quarantine, cultural difference, theory of planned behavior, college students