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Ambiguity and self-protection: evidence from social distancing under the COVID-19 pandemic

Ambiguity and self-protection: evidence from social distancing under the COVID-19 pandemic This paper studies how people make decisions over preventive behaviors under ambiguity (i.e., Knightian uncertainty) where they do not even know the probability of a loss. In the context of the current COVID-19 pandemic, scientific uncertainty makes it hard to evaluate not only whether one will be infected, but also probabilities such as the infection rate. We constructed a simple model and demonstrated how its effect was heterogeneous depending on ambiguity-attitudes. Motivated by the model, we further conducted a survey experiment in Japan where we manipulated the information regarding scientific uncertainty on COVID-19. We found that higher ambiguity induced by scientific uncertainty increased the level of social distancing among ambiguity-loving people, but such evidence was nonexistent for ambiguity-averse counterparts. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png The Japanese Economic Review Springer Journals

Ambiguity and self-protection: evidence from social distancing under the COVID-19 pandemic

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References (56)

Publisher
Springer Journals
Copyright
Copyright © Japanese Economic Association 2022. Springer Nature or its licensor holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
ISSN
1352-4739
eISSN
1468-5876
DOI
10.1007/s42973-022-00120-3
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

This paper studies how people make decisions over preventive behaviors under ambiguity (i.e., Knightian uncertainty) where they do not even know the probability of a loss. In the context of the current COVID-19 pandemic, scientific uncertainty makes it hard to evaluate not only whether one will be infected, but also probabilities such as the infection rate. We constructed a simple model and demonstrated how its effect was heterogeneous depending on ambiguity-attitudes. Motivated by the model, we further conducted a survey experiment in Japan where we manipulated the information regarding scientific uncertainty on COVID-19. We found that higher ambiguity induced by scientific uncertainty increased the level of social distancing among ambiguity-loving people, but such evidence was nonexistent for ambiguity-averse counterparts.

Journal

The Japanese Economic Review – Springer Journals

Published: Oct 1, 2022

Keywords: Scientific uncertainty; Ambiguity; Self-protection; Preventive behaviors; COVID-19; D80; D81; I12

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