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Fatalism, Beliefs, and Behaviors During the COVID-19 Pandemic / Jesper Akesson, Sam Ashworth-Hayes, Robert Hahn, Robert D. Metcalfe, Itzhak Rasooly.
- Format:
- Book
- Author/Creator:
- Akesson, Jesper.
- Series:
- Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w27245.
- NBER working paper series no. w27245
- Language:
- English
- Physical Description:
- 1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);
- Place of Publication:
- Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2020.
- Summary:
- Little is known about how people's beliefs concerning the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) influence their behavior. To shed light on this, we conduct an online experiment (n = 3,610) with US and UK residents. Participants are randomly allocated to a control group or to one of two treatment groups. The treatment groups are shown upperor lower-bound expert estimates of the infectiousness of the virus. We present three main empirical findings. First, individuals dramatically overestimate the dangerousness and infectiousness of COVID-19 relative to expert opinion. Second, providing people with expert information partially corrects their beliefs about the virus. Third, the more infectious people believe that COVID-19 is, the less willing they are to take protective measures, a finding we dub the "fatalism effect". We develop a formal model that can explain the fatalism effect and discuss its implications for optimal policy during the pandemic.
- Notes:
- Print version record
- May 2020.
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