Ciancio Alberto, Kämpfen Fabrice, Kohler Hans-Peter, Thornton Rebecca
University of Glasgow, Adam Smith Business School and IZA.
University College Dublin, School of Economics.
Am Econ Rev Insights. 2025 Mar;7(1):1-18. doi: 10.1257/aeri.20240058.
When there is no treatment available for a life-threatening disease, providing personal health information could lead to despair or fatalistic behaviors resulting in negative health outcomes. We document this possibility utilizing an experiment in Malawi that randomized incentives to learn HIV testing results in a context where anti-retroviral treatment was not yet available. Six years after the experiment, among HIV+s, those who learned their status were 23 percentage points less likely to survive than those who did not, with effects persisting after 15 years. Receiving an HIV+ diagnosis resulted in riskier health behaviors, greater anxiety, and higher discount rates.
当对于一种危及生命的疾病没有可用的治疗方法时，提供个人健康信息可能会导致绝望或宿命论行为，从而产生负面的健康结果。我们利用在马拉维进行的一项实验记录了这种可能性，该实验在抗逆转录病毒治疗尚未可用的情况下，随机给予激励措施以了解艾滋病毒检测结果。实验六年之后，在艾滋病毒呈阳性的人群中，得知自己感染状况的人比不知道的人存活的可能性低23个百分点，且这种影响在15年后依然存在。收到艾滋病毒呈阳性的诊断结果会导致更危险的健康行为、更大的焦虑以及更高的贴现率。
