RAPID Collaborative Research: Economic Preferences and Preventative Health Measures During a Pandemic

The research team will conduct choice experiments combined with a survey to determine how the COVID-19 pandemic may be shaping economic preferences. They also want to determine whether those preferences are correlated with preventive health actions taken by individuals. The project will include subjects from a variety of different racial and ethnic groups, to get solid information on the groups that to date have been especially affected by COVID-19 in the United States. The project should help us understand whether and how methods developed for use in behavioral economics and consumer choice can also help us predict the extent of health promoting behaviors. The results may also give us new insights into how to best target public health communications.

The experimental tasks will measure risk tolerance, time preference, altruism, willingness to contribute to public goods, cooperation, willingness to lie in self protection, preference for competition, and over/under confidence. Economic theory suggests that each of these aspects of individual preferences play a role in determining the extent to which a given individual carries out recommended health behaviors. Examples of these behaviors are wearing a mask (altruism, willingness to contribute to public goods), truthfully informing others about possible exposure (willingness to lie), avoiding crowds and indoor spaces (risk tolerance, over confidence), and limiting social gatherings today for future benefits (time preference). Survey methods will be used to measure health behaviors. The team will use the data to test whether or not economic preference measurements do indeed predict health behaviors.

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.