Social distancing and wellbeing: conceptualizing actor distance and actor safe zone for pandemics

Abstract

This article conceptualizes social distancing in the wake of disasters, such as pandemics, which affect the way actors perceive themselves in relation to the world around them. It advances that social distancing goes beyond the mere notion of being physically distant by drawing on work in psychology. This article introduces the term actor distance and applies the four domains of temporal, hypothetical, physical and social distance to the construct. Moreover, this work embeds actor distance in earlier work on actor wellbeing and the notion of a resources–challenges equilibrium (RCE) concept of wellbeing. Expanding on the framework of RCE, this article coins the term of actor safe zone and infuses it into Transformative Service Research. It discusses the connection of actor distance, RCE and actor safe zone in the light of major incidents and derives implications for service research and practice.