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.

KEYWORDS:

• COVID-19
• pandemic
• Transformative service research
• consumer wellbeing
• social distancing
• actor distance
• actor safe zone
• resources
• challenges

Acknowledgement

The author is deeply indebted to psychologist Dr Beverley Kirk for making available her “cognitive resources” and for providing helpful pointers as well as remarks on an earlier version of this article. In particular, this relates to the information on the central nervous system and the mechanisms at work when being under stress. The author also wishes to thank the editor, Professor Levent Altinay and the three guest editors, Professors Catherine Prentice, Sertan Kabadayi and Arch Woodside, for initiating, coordinating and managing this special issue.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.