Frequency or total number? A comparison of different presentation formats on risk perception during COVID-19

Yun Jie

Judgment and Decision Making, 2022, vol. 17, issue 1, 215-236

Abstract: Curbing the COVID-19 pandemic remains an ongoing global challenge. Institutions often release information about confirmed COVID-19 cases by citing the total number of cases (e.g., 100,000), their (relative) frequency (e.g., 100 per 1,000,000), or occasionally their proportion (e.g., 0.0001) in a region. I compared the effect of these three presentation formats — total cases, frequency, and proportion — on people’s perceived risk. I found people perceived a higher risk of COVID-19 from a total-cases format than from frequency formats when the denominators are relatively small, and the lowest risk from a proportion format. Correspondingly, people underestimated total infections when given frequency and overestimated frequency when given total number of cases. Additional comparisons were made among mathematically equivalent variations of frequency formats (e.g., 1 in 100, 10 in 1,000, 1,000 in 10,000, etc.). The results provided qualified support for denominator neglect, which seems to occur in bins into which denominators are grouped (e.g., 1–1000, 10000–100000), such that only across bins could participants perceive differences. Finally, a mixed format of proportion and total cases reduced perceived risks from total cases alone, while a mixed format of frequency and total cases failed to produce similar results. I conclude by providing concrete suggestions regarding COVID-19 information releases.

Date: 2022
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/ ... type/journal_article link to article abstract page (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cup:judgdm:v:17:y:2022:i:1:p:215-236_10

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Judgment and Decision Making from Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press, UPH, Shaftesbury Road, Cambridge CB2 8BS UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Kirk Stebbing ().