Abstract: Exploring how executives perceive risk and take actions during the outbreak of novel coronavirus pneumonia can help governments and relevant departments develop targeted measures, optimize enterprises’ response to the epidemic, and reduce the adverse impact of the epidemic on economic development. This paper first put forth assumptions based on the research of existing literature, and then identified society, finance, psychology, and health risk perception of executives as the independent variables, whereas executives’ actions during epidemic as the dependent variables, to construct a structural equation model to verify the proposed hypothesis. The study found that the financial and psychological risk perceptions of enterprise managers in the epidemic had a significant positive effect on positive epidemic prevention and anti-epidemic behavior, while the social and health risk perceptions a significant negative effect. Finally, it put forward suggestions that we should appropriately control the financial and psychological risks of enterprise managers and minimize social and health risks as much as possible.

Key words: Risk perception, Behavior choice, COVID-19