Ambiguity and self-protection: evidence from social distancing under the COVID-19 pandemic

Daiki Kishishita (), Hans H. Tung () and Charlotte Wang ()
Additional contact information
Daiki Kishishita: Tokyo University of Science
Hans H. Tung: National Taiwan University
Charlotte Wang: Columbia University

The Japanese Economic Review, 2024, vol. 75, issue 2, No 3, 269-300

Abstract: Abstract This paper studies how people make decisions over preventive behaviors under ambiguity (i.e., Knightian uncertainty) where they do not even know the probability of a loss. In the context of the current COVID-19 pandemic, scientific uncertainty makes it hard to evaluate not only whether one will be infected, but also probabilities such as the infection rate. We constructed a simple model and demonstrated how its effect was heterogeneous depending on ambiguity-attitudes. Motivated by the model, we further conducted a survey experiment in Japan where we manipulated the information regarding scientific uncertainty on COVID-19. We found that higher ambiguity induced by scientific uncertainty increased the level of social distancing among ambiguity-loving people, but such evidence was nonexistent for ambiguity-averse counterparts.

Keywords: Scientific uncertainty; Ambiguity; Self-protection; Preventive behaviors; COVID-19 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D80 D81 I12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s42973-022-00120-3 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

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:spr:jecrev:v:75:y:2024:i:2:d:10.1007_s42973-022-00120-3

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.springer.com/journal/42973

DOI: 10.1007/s42973-022-00120-3

Access Statistics for this article

The Japanese Economic Review is currently edited by Michihiro Kandori

More articles in The Japanese Economic Review from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().