THE ROLE OF RELATIONAL TRUST DURING COVID-19 PANDEMIC AMONG UNIVERSITY STUDENTS

Abstract

In response to the Corona Virus diseases 2019 (Covid-19) crisis, the university students became as one of the Malaysian concern especially when they are stranded while the MCO has been exposed by the government. To reduce the impact on psychological pressure, the university via health center and student accommodation center were instructed to function as social support units. Besides food and other necessaries, the information regarding to Covid-19 and crisis management needs to be disseminated. We sampled stranded university students from Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM) using simple random sampling. With 275 responses, results of multiple mediation regression analysis indicated that the role of relational trust mediates the relationship between crisis responsibility and willingness to seek information. However, gender differences were not influence the behavior and willingness towards seeking the information. It is suggested that the relational trust among UiTM students were influenced by the service quality offered by the centers, thus inculcate them to discover more information with regards to Covid-19 outbreak.