The Impact of an Epidemic: Experimental Evidence on Preference Stability from Wuhan

Jason Shachat, Matthew Walker and Lijia Wei

AEA Papers and Proceedings, 2021, vol. 111, 302-06

Abstract: We examine how the outbreak of the COVID-19 virus in the Hubei province of China impacted pro-social behavior and attitudes toward risk and uncertainty. The study repeatedly applies a panel of financially incentivized individual and strategic decision tasks via the WeChat social media platform to a population of preregistered Wuhan University students. We find that the initial outbreak coupled with the lock-down of Wuhan City led to an uptick in altruism, trust, and ambiguity aversion and a downtick in risk aversion. Over the remaining samples, we observed that all measurements return to baseline levels except for risk aversion.

JEL-codes: D12 D64 D81 I12 I15 O15 P36 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (19)

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DOI: 10.1257/pandp.20211002

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