| Summary: | 碩士 === 朝陽科技大學 === 環境工程與管理系碩士班 === 92 === SARS ( Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome ), a viral respiratory disease, broke out in March 2003, spread out rapidly and caused a great deal of anxiety in general public and the governments as well. Subsequently, the authorities acted singularly under one command to legislate and enforce the policy to control the plague. Government efforts also include the dissemination of accurate information about SARS and educational campaign to enhance the citizens’ consciousness of the crisis, to adjust the citizens’ behavior in line with the guideline set by government for SARS contral. This research designed a set of questionnaire to survey a sample of professional people about their SARS’ knowledge, personal activities during SARS period and aftermath, and their opinion of SARS impact. This study then applies analysis of variance, structural equation model﹙SEM﹚and discriminant analysis to the collected data.
The survey was targeted at the staff in Hsinchu Science-based Industrial Park for empirical study. The data consisted of 355 respondents with 400 administered.
The data show that individuals’ behavior durning the SARS periad and aftermath are different with statistical significance by the analysis of variance. The study regarded the knowledge of SARS as latent independent variable ( exogenous variable ) and considered individual activities durring the SARS period and aftermath, and impact cognition as three dependant variable ( endogenous variable ). The structural equation model﹙SEM﹚was then applied to test the hypothesis that there exists cause-effect relation among these latent variables.
The results seem to indicate the relation exists among there variables. Above all, the knowledge to impact cognition has a positive effect ( 0.67 ), the knowledge to the behavior in the period of SARS has a negative effect ( -0.48 ) and the knowledge to the behavior after the period of SARS has a positive effect ( 0.40 ). The SEM also shows that the behavior in the period of SARS strongly affects the behavior after SARS ( 0.93 ) while the individuals’ behavior after the period of SARS affects the individuals’ cognition of SARS only modestly ( 0.28 ).
Among the respondents, 55.8% indicate a Willingness-to-Pay ( WTP ) more than $ 60,000, if they violate the quarantine policy.
The analysis also shows 86.2% ( 306 respondents) of the surveyed people are willing to Pay for the vaccine against SARS, but not higher than 1,500 NT dollars. To predict a respondent’s willing-to-pay for more than $ 60,000 ( $ 1,500 ) or less for quarantine violation ( vaccine cost ), this study utilized respondent’s attributes as predictors and applied discriminant analysis. The results show predictions conducted by the discriminant analysis model is 61.7% correct for the SARS quarantine violators who are willing to pay the fine; 69.6% correct for the respondents who are willing to pay for the SARS vaccine. The predctors with statistical significance are age ( 50-61 ), junior high school graduate, southern area resident, high school graduate, general administration staff, annual income between 500K and 1M NT dollars and gender for the SARS quarantine violation. For vaccine discrimination, the predicators are supervisor category, gender, collage graduate, ages between 21 to 30, profession of sales.
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