**1. Introduction**

In December 2019, a novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) was discovered and started to spread worldwide [1]. The World Health Organization (WHO) [2] further declared the COVID-19 epidemic to be a public health emergency of international concern on January 30, 2020, which has caused high levels of public concern and fear about the possibility of a pandemic [1]. The media can provide fast and critical guidance regarding the pandemic [2]; however, different types of media may have different effects on coping. While traditional media (e.g., TV, newspapers, and radio) provide formal information about threats, new media (e.g., Internet and social media) has a more direct, personal impact on risk assessment [3]. New media may increase personal stress responses by sharing and viewing uncensored media content [4]. In addition, even new media may become a source of rapid dissemination of misinformation, aggravating public confusion and anxiety (Kim, 2019) [2] and thus negatively affect public health and well-being [5–9].

**Citation:** Luo, Y.-F.; Shen, H.-Y.; Yang, S.-C.; Chen, L.-C. The Relationships among Anxiety, Subjective Well-Being, Media Consumption, and Safety-Seeking Behaviors during the COVID-19 Epidemic. *Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health* **2021**, *18*, 13189. https:// doi.org/10.3390/ijerph182413189

Academic Editors: Paolo Roma, Merylin Monaro and Cristina Mazza

Received: 25 October 2021 Accepted: 10 December 2021 Published: 14 December 2021

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**Copyright:** © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/).

A meta-analysis of longitudinal cohort studies comparing mental health before versus during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 found an overall increase in mental health symptoms—e.g., [10–14]. Canet-Juric et al. (2020) assessed the citizen's emotional impact of the lockdown measures implemented by the Argentinian government to fight the COVID-19 pandemic [15]. They surveyed the Argentinian general population twice (2 days after the mandatory quarantine started (time 1) vs. 2 weeks later (time 2). A total of 6057 people answered the two internet surveys and statistically significant variations were observed between the two time points. Their study suggested that it is necessary to continue monitoring mental health problems on the general population and necessary to create programs aimed at promoting mental health and to distribute information about it. Ramiz et al. (2021) conducted a longitudinal study of mental health, before and during the COVID-19 lockdown, in the French population [16]. They found, overall, people's mental health deteriorated during the lockdown in France amid the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. Moreover, their self-rated physical health improved but those who experienced a worse physical health were more likely to have mental health issues.

Anxiety is viewed as subsuming fear, panic, and worry, and it can be maladaptive, disrupting performance and interfering with both psychological and physical well-being [17]. Existing research results have shown that anxiety regarding the COVID-19 epidemic has a negative impact on health [18,19]. However, the literature also indicates that anxiety can trigger individual alertness and motivation to engage in safe behaviors that can promote survival and contribute to personal well-being [20,21]. The COVID-19 epidemic is a major public health event that involves the spread of the disease worldwide, and the impact of COVID-19 on people needs to be better understood [22].

Therefore, this research aims to understand Taiwanese people's health status, anxiety about COVID-19, media sources for obtaining COVID-19 information, subjective wellbeing, and safety-seeking behavior during the COVID-19 epidemic.

### *1.1. Research Question and Hypothesis 1*

The COVID-19 outbreak has caused public anxiety [6,22,23]. Anxiety, including complex emotional responses such as tension, fear, panic, and worry, is a very important concept in personality psychology [24]. Anxiety arises from the evaluation of a high degree of uncertainty about whether impending physical or psychological harm can be avoided [25]. Such an evaluation of uncertainty involves risk judgment, which includes perceived risk and worry [26]. Risk perception is a subjective cognitive assessment that involves the assessment of the probability of a specified negative accident occurring and the severity of consequences [27,28]. Worry is an emotional response, such as "feeling worried" when thinking about a risk source. According to the risk-as-feelings approach [29], cognitive assessment and worry have a reciprocal influence [26]. Therefore, this study intends to understand the anxiety state of participants during the COVID-19 epidemic and propose the following research questions:
