RAPID: Collaborative Research: The Impact of COVID-19 on Norms, Risk-taking, Information, and Trust

新型冠状病毒(新冠肺炎)对世界各国的影响很大，很可能对健康行为、社会规范以及对政府和其他组织的信任产生短期和长期影响。在短期内，政府和卫生组织提供广泛的信息和建议行为，以避免感染疾病并将其传播给其他人。这项研究包括调查，以找出人们是否以及在多大程度上遵循建议并改变行为。由于研究团队已经跟踪调查了几年的大学生样本，团队已经对他们有了很多了解，这有助于了解遵守建议的变化情况。例如，组织中的风险容忍度和信任度可能很重要。该团队正在探索人们如何处理有关病毒的信息，以及这如何影响他们对自己和他人风险的信念。研究人员还在研究新冠肺炎疫情对社会规范的影响，以及这些影响是如何随着时间的推移而变化的。这项研究的第二波着眼于更长期的影响。这项研究的结果将有助于制定未来关于健康风险的政策和沟通，特别是在流行病和其他健康危机期间。研究人员利用之前的受试者样本来测试新冠肺炎信息和推荐对行为、社会规范、对彼此和机构的信任以及风险承受能力的影响。他们有四个研究领域。第一个问题是人们如何在新冠肺炎的背景下处理“嘈杂”的信息。团队成员之前的研究表明，一些人倾向于误解这些信息，这对他们有利。这些团队采用了之前工作的方法和协议，以检查个人如何解读新冠肺炎信息，以及这如何影响他们对自己漏洞的信念。其次，该团队研究了新冠肺炎对行为规范的影响，包括那些与病毒直接相关的行为规范(社交距离、洗手)，以及可能正在转变或新出现的因应对CoVID19而发生变化的信任、分享和群体偏袒规范。团队成员之前的工作开发了一种获取社会规范的方法，并表明规范随着社会影响而演变。第三，他们探讨了新冠肺炎对人际信任和对机构的信任的影响，这对遵循政府和组织建议的意愿有显著影响。团队成员之前的工作使用激励性游戏和调查来研究自然灾害背景下的信任和互惠。最后，他们考察了与新冠肺炎相关的风险认知和风险承担。使用激励性风险承受能力指标，以及特定领域的风险认知和行为调查指标，该团队探索了风险厌恶和行为之间的关系，以及新冠肺炎的出现如何改变了人们对冒险的偏好。在这些方面，对这些主题的先验知识提供了一个机会，以研究国家健康灾难对信息处理、社会规范、信任和互惠以及冒险的影响。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The novel coronavirus (COVID-19) has hit countries around the world hard and is likely to have both short-run and long-run impacts on health behaviors, social norms, and trust in government and other organizations. In the short run, governments and health organizations provide extensive information and recommend behavior to avoid contracting the disease and spreading it to others. This research involves surveys to figure out whether and to what extent people follow recommendations and change behavior. Because the research team has been following a sample of university students for several years, the team already knows a lot about them, and this facilitates an understanding of variation in compliance with recommendations. For example, risk-tolerance and trust in organizations are likely to matter. The team is exploring how people process information about the virus, and how that affects their beliefs about the risks to themselves and others. The researchers also are examining the impact of the COVID-19 outbreak on social norms, and how those change over time. The second wave of the study looks for longer run impacts. The results of this study will be useful in shaping future policies and communications about health risks, especially during epidemics and other health crises. The researchers make use of previous samples of subjects to test the impact of COVID-19 information and recommendations on behavior, social norms, trust in each other and institutions, and risk-tolerance. They have four areas of study. The first is how how people process “noisy” information in the context of COVID-19. Prior research by a team member has shown that some individuals tend to misunderstand such information to their benefit. The teams adapt the methodology and protocol of the prior work to examine how individuals interpret COVID-19 information, and how this affects their beliefs about their own vulnerabilities. Second, the team studies the impact of COVID-19 on norms of behavior, including those directly related to the virus (social distancing, hand-washing), as well as norms of trust, sharing and in-group favoritism that may be shifting or newly emerging in response to COVID19. Prior work by a team member developed a methodology for eliciting social norms, and has shown that norms evolve in response to social influence. Third, they explore the impact of COVID-19 on interpersonal trust and trust in institutions, which significantly impacts willingness to follow government and organizational recommendations. Prior work by team members used incentivized games and surveys to study trust and reciprocity in natural disaster settings. Finally, they look at risk perception and risk taking related to COVID-19. Using incentivized measures of risk tolerance, and survey measures of domain-specific risk perceptions and behavior, the team explores the relationship between risk aversion and behavior, but also how the advent of COVID-19 has changed preferences for risk-taking. In these ways prior knowledge about the subjects provides an opportunity to study the impact of a national health catastrophe on information processing, social norms, trust and reciprocity and risk-taking.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.