Objective  To examine the prevalence, characteristics and influencing factors of response behaviors towards coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) epidemic among the public in China for providing evidences to the development of relevant behavioral interventions.

  Methods  During August 2020, we conducted an online voluntary survey among 19 132 adult (≥ 18 years) internet users in 31 provincial level regions across China with a self - designed questionnaire. Latent class analysis was adopted to describe the characteristics of response behaviors reported by the respondents and SPSS software was used to analyze influencing factors of the behaviors.

  Results  Mask wearing, frequent hand washing, and home isolation were reported by 94.7%, 94.4%, and 86.2% of the respondents, indicating a general response behavior of the public. But excessive protective behaviors were also reported by many respondents, including regular mask wearing in an outdoor environment (by 77.6% of the respondents), repeated hand washing (41.3%), frequent mass disinfection (27.2%), and preventive medication (25.9%). The results of latent class analysis revealed three potential types of respondents' behavioral pattens, namely alertness, calmness, and fearlessness and the proportions of the respondents with the three styles were 23.0%, 67.8%, 9.2%, respectively. The results of logistic regression analysis showed that the respondents with the occupations other than medical workers are more likely to behave in an alertness pattern (odds ratio OR = 1.293) than in a calmness pattern; while, following respondents are more likely to behave in fearlessness pattern: male gender (OR = 1.626), being unemployed (OR = 1.591), and living in rural regions (OR = 1.218); the results also indicated that the respondents with low education level, at middle or young age, with a high income, and residing in regions with low risk of COVID - 19 epidemic are more likely to take extreme response behaviors.

  Conclusion  There are prominent latent types of public response behaviors towards COVID - 19 epidemic and the response behaviors appear in clustering with different proportions. People with lower education, at middle or young age, with high income, and residing in low - risk areas are prone to behave in extremely alert or fearless manner, suggesting that the two groups are key population needing relevant behavioral interventions.