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1. Reliability but not bias: Developing a scale to measure preferred channels for risk information during the COVID pandemic

   https://doi.org/10.1111/risa.14035  

   Lachlan, Kenneth A.; Gilbert, Christine (January 2022, Risk Analysis)

   To develop a new measure of preferred sources for risk information, two studies asked respondents to indicate what channels they were reliant on for information about COVID-19, from 25 news channels ranging across the political spectrum. Unexpectedly, dependencies clustered around level of reliability rather than the political orientation of the news channel. In other words, each cluster included media channels from both the left and right side of the political spectrum, while dependencies clustered into sources that varied by the degree to which their content is reliable. Participants who turned to lower reliability channels indicated lower risk perceptions, less accurate probability estimations, reduced vaccination intentions, and lower protective behavioral intentions. Those inclined to use higher reliability channels indicated higher risk perceptions, more accurate probability estimations, increased vaccination intentions, and higher protective behavioral intentions. These relationships are discussed in terms of implications for our understanding of source reliance and risk perception, information sufficiency, and implications for both future research and public health interventions. 

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2. Evacuate or social distance? Modeling the influence of threat perceptions on hurricane evacuation in a dual‐threat environment

   https://doi.org/10.1111/risa.14202  

   Wu, Hao‐Che; Murphy, Haley; Greer, Alex; Clay, Lauren (August 2023, Risk Analysis)

   Cox, L. Anthony (Ed.)

   This study investigates how different risk predictors influenced households’ evacuation decisions during a dual‐threat event (Hurricane Laura and COVID‐19 pandemic). The Protective Action Decision Model (PADM) literature indicates that perceived threat variables are the most influential variables that drive evacuation decisions. This study applies the PADM to investigate a dual‐threat disaster that has conflicting protective action recommendations. Given the novelty, scale, span, impact, and messaging around COVID‐19, it is crucial to see how hurricanes along the Gulf Coast—a hazard addressed seasonally by residents with mostly consistent protective action messaging—produce different reactions in residents in this pandemic context. Household survey data were collected during early 2021 using a disproportionate stratified sampling procedure to include households located in mandatory and voluntary evacuation areas across the coastal counties in Texas and parishes in Louisiana that were affected by Hurricane Laura. Structural equation modeling was used to identify the relationships between perceived threats and evacuation decisions. The findings suggest affective risk perceptions strongly affected cognitive risk perceptions (CRPs). Notably, hurricane and COVID‐19 CRPs are significant predictors of hurricane evacuation decisions in different ways. Hurricane CRPs encourage evacuation, but COVID‐19 CRPs hinder evacuation decisions. 

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3. Explaining compliance with COVID-19 regulation in China and the United States: cultural biases, political trust, and perceptions of risk and protective actions

   https://doi.org/10.1017/S0143814X23000429  

   Yuan, Meng; Mayorga, Marcus; Johnson, Branden B; Swedlow, Brendon (June 2024, Journal of Public Policy)

   How do cultural biases, trust in government, and perceptions of risk and protective actions influence compliance with regulation of COVID-19? Analyzing Chinese (n = 646) and American public opinion samples (n = 1,325) from spring 2020, we use Grid–Group Cultural Theory and the Protective Action Decision Model to specify, respectively, cultural influences on public risk perceptions and decision-making regarding protective actions. We find that cultural biases mostly affect protective actions indirectly through public perceptions. Regardless of country, hierarchical cultural biases increase protective behaviors via positive perceptions of protective actions. However, other indirect effects of cultural bias via public perceptions vary across both protective actions and countries. Moreover, trust in government only mediates the effect of cultural bias in China and risk perception only mediates the effect of cultural bias in the United States. Our findings suggest that regulators in both countries should craft regulations that are congenial to culturally diverse populations. 

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4. Americans’ COVID-19 risk perceptions and risk perception predictors changed over time

   https://doi.org/10.1080/13669877.2023.2208149  

   Johnson, Branden B; Mayorga, Marcus; Kim, Byungdoo (July 2023, Journal of Risk Research)

   Identifying and understanding risk perceptions—“how bad are the harms” to humans or to what they value that people see as potentially or actually arising from entities or events—has been critical for risk analysis, both for its own sake, and for expected associations between risk perceptions and subsequent outcomes, such as risky or protective behavior, or support for hazard management policies. Cross-sectional surveys have been the dominant method for identifying and understanding risk perceptions, yielding valuable data. However, cross-sectional surveys are unable to probe the dynamics of risk perceptions over time, which is critical to do while living in a dynamically hazardous world and to build causal understandings. Building upon earlier longitudinal panel studies of Americans’ Ebola and Zika risk perceptions using multi-level modeling to assess temporal changes in these views and inter-individual factors affecting them, we examined patterns in Americans’ COVID-19 risk perceptions in six waves across 14 months. The findings suggest that, in general, risk perceptions increased from February 2020 to April 2021, but with varying trends across different risk perception measures (personal, collective, affective, affect, severity, and duration). Factors in baseline risk perceptions (Wave 1) and inter-individual differences across waves differed even more: baseline ratings were associated with how immediate the threat is (temporal distance) and how likely the threat would affect people like oneself (social distance), and following the United States news about the pandemic. Inter-individual trend differences were shaped most by temporal distance, whether local coronavirus infections were accelerating their upward trend, and subjective knowledge about viral transmission. Associations of subjective knowledge and risk trend with risk perceptions could change signs (e.g. from positive to negative) over time. These findings hold theoretical implications for risk perception dynamics and taxonomies, and research design implications for studying risk perception dynamics and their comparison across hazards. 

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5. Cross-temporal relations of conditional risk perception measures with protective actions against COVID-19

   https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2023.115867  

   Johnson, Branden B; Kim, Byungdoo (May 2023, Social Science & Medicine)

   Two decades ago a research team clarified that cross-sectional associations of risk perceptions and protective behavior can only test an “accuracy” hypothesis: e.g., people with higher risk perceptions at Ti should also exhibit low protective behavior and/or high risky behavior at Ti. They argued that these associations are too often interpreted wrongly as testing two other hypotheses, only testable longitudinally: the “behavioral motivation” hypothesis, that high risk perception at Ti increases protective behavior at Ti+1, and the “risk reappraisal” hypothesis, that protective behavior at Ti reduces risk perception at Ti+1. Further, this team argued that risk perception measures should be conditional (e.g., personal risk perception if one’s behavior does not change). Yet these theses have garnered relatively little empirical testing. An online longitudinal panel study of U.S. residents’ COVID-19 views across six survey waves over 14 months in 2020–2021 tested these hypotheses for six behaviors (hand washing, mask wearing, avoiding travel to infected areas, avoiding large public gatherings, vaccination, and [for five waves] social isolation at home). Accuracy and behavioral motivation hypotheses were supported for both behaviors and intentions, excluding a few waves (particularly in February–April 2020, when the pandemic was new in the U.S.) and behaviors. The risk reappraisal hypothesis was contradicted—protective behavior at one wave increased risk perception later—perhaps reflecting continuing uncertainty about efficacy of COVID-19 protective behaviors and/or that dynamic infectious diseases may yield different patterns than chronic diseases dominating such hypothesis-testing. These findings raise intriguing questions for both perception- behavior theory and behavior change practice. 

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