RAPID: Evaluating Ebola Message Effects over Time: Risk Perceptions, Trust in and Attributions of Responsibility to Institutions, Personal Behavior and Policy Support

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While Ebola threatens a major catastrophe in West Africa, its public health impacts in the U.S. are likely to be minor, shaped more by fear than transmission of the virus. The effect, however, on Americans' trust in public health authorities, and thus the impacts on future epidemics, among other impacts, may be much larger. Research to track changes in public views on Ebola risk and management performance, especially their impacts on trust and attribution of responsibility to varied institutions (e.g., Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Department of Health and Human Services, Obama administration, Congress, hospitals), and individual medical professionals and travelers from West Africa, is vital to help foretell public responses to future epidemic threats. Given the diverse and conflicting messages about Ebola risks and institutional performance now present, we also must understand how such messages affect public interpretations of Ebola risk and institutional performance. Results can help improve public health management and communication, plus help integrate theory on risk perception, trust in institutions, attribution of responsibility to institutions, and risk communication.This study involves five surveys over 6 months with the same randomly sampled set of people from a diverse national online panel, exploiting the strength of a longitudinal survey experiment to assess causes of change over time. The experimental part of the study tests effects of alternative messages over this extended period, tracking their interactions with interpretive screens provided by trust and attributions of responsibility. Two messages concern the 21-day quarantine based on WHO recommendations: one message that repeats the authorities' reassurance that this quarantine is long enough that the affected person will not become symptomatic after release, and one that warns (based on expert analyses) of small but non-zero risks that symptoms will appear beyond this period. Besides testing the effect of the latter message on judged risk, trust, and support for the 21-day quarantine limit, the study also tests the inoculation strategy of stimulating counter-arguments to reduce panic effects of later counter-attacks on the quarantine period. A third message, also an inoculation message, stressrd capabilities of the public health system despite inevitable mistakes, to see how this affects trust and responsibility-attribution ratings. In pre-event conditions this kind of inoculation seems to reduce public over-reaction to scary [terrorism] events, but in the midst of ongoing management of Ebola may be counter-productive. The final message will review arguments on specific policies (e.g., how to keep people from Ebola-afflicted West African nations out of the U.S., or from spreading disease while here). Varied belief, attitude and behavioral intention measures tracks effects of these manipulations, and tests potential moderators (e.g., worldview, affect, political ideology and partisanship). Finally, the research includes the first probe of how perceived relations among institutions affect trust and attributions (e.g., belief that CDC was free to act against Ebola without constraints from other institutions may increase its judged responsibility for subsequent failures of performance).