Trends in Preventive Behaviors Across Countries: An Exploratory Study of English Language Tweets

Abstract

People take preventive behaviors to keep themselves from harm and protect themselves from physical harm, psychological threats, or health issues. Previous studies have suggested that preventive behavior trends are closely connected to cultures and values. However, the specific preventive behavior categories, their specific elements, and the preventive behavior differences between countries have never been fully examined. Therefore, using a topic modeling approach to analyze tweets from across the world, this study categorized the preventive behaviors and identified the specific trends in 68 countries. Six main topic foci were found: Life, disease, saving others, physical, psychological, and crime; the extent of these preventive behaviors in each country was analyzed to determine how they were organized and valued in each country. The results of this study could be useful for international firm management, marketing, and government policies and be the starting point for further international preventive behavior studies.