COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH: Dynamic Risk Perceptions about Mexican Swine Flu

许多决定是在面临风险和不确定性的情况下以及在每个人的个人决定影响其他人的结果的情况下做出的。2009年猪流感(甲型H1N1流感)的爆发提供了一个机会，可以研究外行人对风险的认知是如何随着时间的推移而变化的，以及这些认知如何推动人们愿意采取预防行为(例如使用抗病毒药物或自我隔离)，这些行为不仅会对从事行为的人造成后果，还会影响人口中其他人的风险。调查人员利用互联网上关于S风险认知和采取预防措施意愿的调查，从疫情第一条消息传出几天后开始询问美国成年人队列，并在疫情期间定期持续。这项研究考察了随着时间的推移，来自媒体的关于流感爆发的信息、对风险的看法以及采取预防措施的兴趣之间的关系。这一新传染病的爆发是一个难得的机会，可以研究风险认知和预防行为如何随着时间的推移而变化，以应对有关危险如何展开的信息。这一结果不仅对应对自然灾害的公共卫生措施有影响，而且对理解不确定性下的风险感知和决策的基本机制也有影响。

Many decisions are made in the face of risk and uncertainty and under circumstances where each person's individual decision affects other people's outcomes. The 2009 outbreak of swine flu (influenza A H1N1) provides a chance to study how lay people's perceptions of risks change over time and how those perceptions drive willingness to engage in precautionary behaviors (such as anti-viral medication use or self quarantine) that not only have consequences for the person who engages in the behaviors but that also affect the risks for others in the population. The investigators use an internet survey regarding people?s risk perception and willingness to take precautionary measures to query cohorts of US adults starting a few days after the first news of the outbreak and continuing at regular intervals throughout the epidemic. The research examines the relationships over time among information from the media about the influenza outbreak, perceptions of risk, and interest in taking precautionary measures. This outbreak of a new infectious disease represents a rare opportunity to study how risk perceptions and precautionary behaviors change over time in response to information about how the hazard unfolds. The results could have implications not only for public health responses to natural disasters but also for an understanding of the basic mechanisms underlying risk perception and decision making under uncertainty.