RAPID: A Longitudinal Study of Public Responses to the Coronavirus

在世界卫生组织国际关注的突发公共卫生事件可能威胁到广大美国人的生活质量之际，冠状病毒大流行为研究公众风险认知和风险相关行为提供了难得的机会。在美国，很少有紧急情况影响到这么多人。这种情况是一个丰富的机会，因为它是实时发生的，是高度动态的，涉及我们国家和世界各地的许多玩家。因此，它使研究小组有机会将这种健康威胁与其他可感知的灾难（如移民、恐怖主义和未来可能出现的公共卫生紧急情况）进行比较。随着时间的推移，公众的看法和与风险相关的行为似乎会随着媒体报道以及我们自己和外国政府的行动而改变。在一项纵向研究中，研究团队邀请亚马逊土耳其机器人的参与者每月完成一项调查，为期5个月。研究人员询问了他们对冠状病毒的风险认知和情感反应，与他人讨论冠状病毒的频率，对假设的实验性疫苗和治疗的行为意图，以及对隔离等可能的政策解决方案的支持。该研究还确定了他们的旅行计划和媒体曝光率，包括他们对这些消息来源的信任程度。该团队通过使用潜在变量增长曲线模型来模拟参与者对冠状病毒的情绪、风险感知和行为反应，该模型研究了变量随时间的变化轨迹。为了建立因果关系，学者们还进行了第二个相关实验，通过叙述来操纵影响，并检查其对风险认知、医疗决策和政策决策的影响。参与者被分配到一个更消极或更消极的条件，并使用中介分析来评估操纵的效果。在这些研究中，风险感知、风险的社会放大、情感的启发式和其他功能以及计算能力之间建立了理论联系。通过将当前的感受与风险判断、预期的预防和治疗行为以及对政策选择的支持联系起来，对情感的三种功能进行了动态测试。关于影响的理论研究尚未在世界突发卫生事件的背景下得到检验。这项研究的结果是对情绪和媒体暴露如何影响疫苗和治疗选择以及对政策支持的深刻机制理解。最后，第二项研究建立了对预防、治疗和政策策略的影响和支持之间的因果关系。该研究测试了情感和动机推理功能的动态和因果力量，以便为对冠状病毒和未来流行病的情绪反应进行干预奠定基础。这项研究对公众和政策制定者面临的其他影响很大的决策也有重要的启示，包括沟通方法。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The coronavirus pandemic provides a rare opportunity to study public risk perceptions and risk-related behaviors in the midst of a World Health Organization Public Health Emergency of International Concern that could threaten the quality of life of a wide spectrum of Americans. Few emergencies within the United States have affected so many people. The situation is a rich opportunity because it is occurring in real-time and is highly dynamic, involving many players in our country and around the world. As a result, it allows the research team a chance to compare this health threat with other perceived disasters such as immigration, terrorism, and possible future public health emergencies. The public’s perceptions and risk-related behaviors seem likely to change over time in response to media coverage as well as actions from our own and foreign governments.In one longitudinal study, the research team invites participants from Amazon Mechanical Turk to complete one survey each month for 5 months. The researchers query their risk perceptions and affective responses toward the coronavirus, frequency of discussions about the coronavirus with others, behavioral intentions towards hypothetical experimental vaccines and treatments, and support for possible policy solutions such as quarantine. The research also ascertains their intended travel plans and media exposure to the pandemic including how much they trust those sources. The team models the emotional, risk-perception, and behavioral responses of participants toward the coronavirus by using a latent variable growth curve model that examines the trajectories of variables over time. To establish causal links, the scholars also conduct a second related experiment that manipulates affect through narratives and examines its effects on risk perceptions, medical decisions, and policy decisions. Participants are assigned to a more negative or less negative condition, and mediation analysis is used to evaluate the manipulation’s effects. In these studies, theoretical links are made between risk perceptions, social amplification of risk, the affect heuristic and other functions of affect, and numeracy. There is a dynamic test of the three functions of affect by correlating current feelings over time with risk judgments, intended prevention and treatment behaviors, and support for policy options. Theoretical research on affect has not been tested in the setting of a world health emergency. This research results in deep mechanistic understanding of how emotions and media exposure influence vaccine and treatment choices as well as support for policies. Finally, the second study establishes causal links between affect and support for prevention, treatment, and policy strategies. The research tests the dynamic and causal power of the functions of affect and motivated reasoning in order to lay the groundwork for interventions for emotional responses to the coronavirus and future epidemics. The research also has important implications, including for communication methods, for other affect-rich decisions faced by the public and policy makers.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.