**Hypothesis 4 (H4).** *COVID-19 anxiety is negatively related to subjective well-being*.

However, anxiety is also seen as an adaptive function that enables individuals to enhance their readiness for action when faced with ambiguous and unpredictable threats [20]. Therefore, proper anxiety about self-health helps individuals be alert to their own health and seek improvement [42]. In other words, anxiety is not only a result of health problems but also an alert and motivation that drives people to "seek safe behaviors" to effectively reduce threats [21]. Similarly, Li et al. (2020) noted that, in the face of potential disease threats, people tend to develop avoidance behaviors (e.g., avoid contact with people with pneumonia-like symptoms) and strictly follow social norms (e.g., conformity) [19]. Accordingly, we propose the following hypothesis:

**Hypothesis 5 (H5).** *COVID-19 anxiety is positively related to safety-seeking behaviors to prevent infection*.

The hypotheses that form the framework of this study are shown in Figure 1.

**Figure 1.** Research hypothesis framework.
