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

新型冠状病毒（COVID-19）严重打击了世界各国，并可能对健康行为、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他人。这项研究包括调查，以确定人们是否以及在多大程度上遵循建议并改变行为。由于研究团队已经对大学生样本进行了数年的跟踪调查，因此该团队已经对他们有了很多了解，这有助于理解遵循建议的变化。例如，组织中的风险容忍度和信任可能很重要。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看法。研究人员还在研究COVID-19疫情对社会规范的影响，以及这些规范如何随着时间的推移而变化。第二波研究着眼于长期影响。这项研究的结果将有助于制定关于健康风险的未来政策和宣传，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COVID-19信息和建议对行为、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。首先是在新冠疫情背景下，人们如何处理“嘈杂”的信息。一名团队成员之前的研究表明，有些人倾向于误解这些对自己有利的信息。这些团队调整了先前工作的方法和方案，以研究个人如何解释COVID-19信息，以及这如何影响他们对自身脆弱性的看法。其次，研究小组研究了COVID-19对行为规范的影响，包括与病毒直接相关的行为规范（保持社交距离、洗手），以及信任、分享和群体内偏袒的规范，这些规范可能会因COVID-19而改变或新出现。一名团队成员之前的工作开发了一种引发社会规范的方法，并表明规范会随着社会影响而演变。第三，他们探讨了COVID-19对人际信任和机构信任的影响，这显著影响了遵循政府和组织建议的意愿。团队成员先前的工作是使用激励性游戏和调查来研究自然灾害环境下的信任和互惠。最后，他们研究了与COVID-19相关的风险认知和风险承担。利用风险承受能力的激励指标，以及特定领域风险认知和行为的调查指标，该团队探索了风险厌恶与行为之间的关系，以及COVID-19的出现如何改变了风险偏好。通过这些方式，关于主题的先验知识为研究国家卫生灾难对信息处理、社会规范、信任和互惠以及冒险的影响提供了机会。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 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 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.