Attema Arthur E, L'Haridon Olivier, Raude Jocelyn, Seror Valérie
EsCHER, Erasmus School of Health Policy & Management, Erasmus University, Rotterdam, Netherlands.
Faculty of Economics, University of Rennes 1, Rennes, France.
Front Psychol. 2021 Feb 1;12:619145. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.619145. eCollection 2021.
The outbreak of COVID-19 has been a major interrupting event, challenging how societies and individuals deal with risk. An essential determinant of the virus' spread is a series of individual decisions, such as wearing face masks in public space. Those decisions depend on trade-offs between costs (or benefits) and risks, and beliefs are key to explain these.
We elicit beliefs about the COVID-19 pandemic during lockdown in France by means of surveys asking French citizens about their belief of the infection fatality ratio (IFR) for COVID-19, own risk to catch the disease, risk as perceived by others, and expected prevalence rate. Those self-assessments were measured twice during lockdown: about 2 weeks after lockdown started and about 2 weeks before lockdown ended. We also measured the quality of these beliefs with respect to available evidence at the time of the surveys, allowing us to assess the calibration of beliefs based on risk-related socio-demographics. Finally, comparing own risk to expected prevalence rates in the two successive surveys provides a dynamic view of comparative optimism with respect to the disease.
The risk perceptions are rather high in absolute terms and they increased between the two surveys. We found no evidence for an impact of personal experience with COVID-19 on beliefs and lower risk perceptions of the IFR when someone in the respondent's family has been diagnosed with a disease. Answers to survey 1 confirmed this pattern with a clear indication that respondents were optimistic about their chances to catch COVID-19. However, in survey 2, respondents revealed comparative pessimism.
The results show that respondents overestimated the probabilities to catch or die from COVID-19, which is not unusual and does not necessarily reflect a strong deviation from rational behavior. While a rational model explains why the own risk to catch COVID-19 rose between the two surveys, it does not explain why the subjective assessment of the IFR remained stable. The comparative pessimism in survey 2 was likely due to a concomitant increase in the respondents' perceived chances to catch the disease and a decreased expected prevalence rate.
新冠疫情的爆发是一个重大干扰事件，对社会和个人应对风险的方式构成了挑战。病毒传播的一个关键决定因素是一系列个人决策，比如在公共场所佩戴口罩。这些决策取决于成本（或收益）与风险之间的权衡，而信念是解释这些决策的关键。
我们通过调查法国公民对新冠病毒感染致死率（IFR）、自身感染疾病的风险、他人感知的风险以及预期患病率的信念，来获取法国在封锁期间对新冠疫情的信念。在封锁期间对这些自我评估进行了两次测量：封锁开始约2周后以及封锁结束前约2周。我们还根据调查时的现有证据测量了这些信念的质量，从而能够基于与风险相关的社会人口统计学特征评估信念的校准情况。最后，在两次连续调查中比较自身风险与预期患病率，提供了关于该疾病的比较性乐观态度的动态视角。
从绝对数值来看，风险认知相当高，且在两次调查之间有所增加。我们没有发现证据表明个人感染新冠病毒的经历会影响信念，也没有发现当受访者家庭中有成员被诊断出感染疾病时，对感染致死率的风险认知会降低。调查1的答案证实了这一模式，明确表明受访者对自己感染新冠病毒的几率持乐观态度。然而，在调查2中，受访者表现出比较性的悲观态度。
结果表明，受访者高估了感染新冠病毒或死于该疾病的概率，这并不罕见，也不一定反映出与理性行为的强烈偏差。虽然一个理性模型可以解释为什么在两次调查之间感染新冠病毒的自身风险上升了，但它无法解释为什么对感染致死率的主观评估保持稳定。调查2中的比较性悲观态度可能是由于受访者感知到的感染疾病几率同时增加以及预期患病率下降所致。
