Causal Model Analysis of the Effect of Policy Formalism, COVID-19 Fear, Social Support and Work Stress on Construction Workers’ Anxiety during the Epidemic

Abstract

This study mainly explores the impact of policy formalism, COVID-19 fear, social support, and work stress on the anxiety of construction workers during the epidemic. The main objective of this study is to incorporate formalism variables to explore their impact on the stress and anxiety of construction workers during the epidemic. In particular, the variable of formalism is changed from the variable of government bureaucracy to the cognition of “policy formalism” of the general public. This study intends to understand whether the gap between epidemic prevention regulations and practices affects the fear of construction site workers. A total of 743 construction site worker samples in the leisure industry were collected in this study, and the established hypotheses were tested using confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling. The results of the study confirmed that during the COVID-19 outbreak, social support of site workers negatively affects anxiety; COVID-19 fear positively affects anxiety and work stress; work stress mediates the relationship between COVID-19 fear and anxiety; fear of infecting family members and fear of infecting self both positively affect anxiety; policy formalism positively affects fear of infecting family members and fear of infecting self.