scholarly journals Risk preferences and risk perception affect the acceptance of digital contact tracing

Author(s):  
Rebecca Albrecht ◽  
Jana B. Jarecki ◽  
Dominik S. Meier ◽  
Jörg Rieskamp

AbstractDigital contact-tracing applications (DCTAs) can help control the spread of epidemics, such as the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic. But people in Western societies fail to install DCTAs. Understanding the low use rate is key for policy makers who support DCTAs as a way to avoid harsh nationwide lockdowns. In a preregistered study in a representative German-speaking Swiss sample (N = 757), the roles of individual risk perceptions, risk preferences, social preferences, and social values in the acceptance of and compliance with DCTA were compared. The results show a high compliance with the measures recommended by DCTAs but a comparatively low acceptance of DCTAs. Risk preferences and perceptions, but not social preferences, influenced accepting DCTAs; a high health-risk perception and a low data-security-risk perception increased acceptance. Additionally, support of political measures, technical abilities, and understanding the DCTA functionality had large effects on accepting DCTAs. Therefore, we recommend highlighting personal health risks and clearly explaining DCTAs, focusing on data security, to enhance DCTA acceptance.

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca Albrecht ◽  
Jana Bianca Jarecki ◽  
Dominik Meier ◽  
Jörg Rieskamp

Digital contact-tracing applications (DCTAs) can control the spread of epidemics, like the COVID-19 pandemic. But people in Western societies fail to accept DCTAs. Understanding the low acceptance is key to policymakers who support DCTAs to avoid harsh nationwide lock-downs. In a preregistered study in a representative Swiss sample(N=757), we compare the role of individual risk perception, risk preferences, social preferences, and social values in the acceptance of and compliance with DCTA. The results show a low acceptance of DCTAs but high compliance with the measures recommended by DCTAs. Risk preferences and perceptions, but not social preferences, influenced accepting DCTAs; a high health risk perception and a low data-security risk perception increased acceptance. Additionally, supporting political measures, technical abilities, and understanding the DCTA functionality had large effects on accepting DCTAs. Therefore, we recommend highlighting personal health risks and clearly explaining DCTAs, focusing on data security, to enhance DCTA acceptance.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Plamen Nikolov ◽  
Andreas Pape ◽  
Ozlem Tonguc ◽  
Charlotte Williams

This paper presents preliminary summary results from a longitudinal study of participants in seven U.S. states during the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition to standard socio-economic characteristics, we collect data on various economic preference parameters: time, risk, and social preferences, and risk perception biases. We pay special attention to predictors that are both important drivers of social distancing and are potentially malleable and susceptible to policy levers. We note three important findings: (1) demographic characteristics exert the largest influence on social distancing measures and mask-wearing, (2) we show that individual risk perception and cognitive biases exert a critical role in influencing the decision to adopt social distancing measures, (3) we identify important demographic groups that are most susceptible to changing their social distancing behaviors. These findings can help inform the design of policy interventions regarding targeting specific demographic groups, which can help reduce the transmission speed of the COVID-19 virus.


Tourism ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 69 (3) ◽  
pp. 330-345
Author(s):  
Marion Karl ◽  
Yoel Mansfeld

This exploratory study adopts a multi-dimensional approach to research on how travel-related risk perceptions are formed. It looks at risk-inducing factors both from the tourist and the destination perspectives. Using predefined risk characteristics observed in the literature, the study's leading research question asked to what extent these individual risk factors influence tourists' risk perception. A sample of potential German tourists to Israel was used for this exploratory study. Each interviewee was asked to indicate his/her socio-cultural background, travel experience at different spatial levels, risk-taking personality, level of perceiving Israel as a risky destination, and willingness to travel to Israel. Results show that accumulated travel experience does have a bearing on German tourists' willingness to travel to destinations that carry a high risk image but does not affect the perceived level of risk. Using the concept of geo-familiarity, the study discovered that risk perception may not only be developed on a country destination level but may be different based on spatial perception of risk. Based on these results, the study draws several risk-management and marketing strategies.


Author(s):  
Jin Han ◽  
Jing Zhan ◽  
Xiaoqing Xia ◽  
Xue Fan

Background: Currently, Cloud Service Provider (CSP) or third party usually proposes principles and methods for cloud security risk evaluation, while cloud users have no choice but accept them. However, since cloud users and cloud service providers have conflicts of interests, cloud users may not trust the results of security evaluation performed by the CSP. Also, different cloud users may have different security risk preferences, which makes it difficult for third party to consider all users' needs during evaluation. In addition, current security evaluation indexes for cloud are too impractical to test (e.g., indexes like interoperability, transparency, portability are not easy to be evaluated). Methods: To solve the above problems, this paper proposes a practical cloud security risk evaluation method of decision-making based on conflicting roles by using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) with Aggregation of Individual priorities (AIP). Results: Not only can our method bring forward a new index system based on risk source for cloud security and corresponding practical testing methods, but also can obtain the evaluation result with the risk preferences of conflicting roles, namely CSP and cloud users, which can lay a foundation for improving mutual trusts between the CSP and cloud users. The experiments show that the method can effectively assess the security risk of cloud platforms and in the case where the number of clouds increased by 100% and 200%, the evaluation time using our methodology increased by only by 12% and 30%. Conclusion: Our method can achieve consistent decision based on conflicting roles, high scalability and practicability for cloud security risk evaluation.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (17) ◽  
pp. 6851
Author(s):  
Neal Spicer ◽  
Brenda Parlee ◽  
Molly Chisaakay ◽  
Doug Lamalice

Many Indigenous communities across Canada suffer from the lack of access to clean drinking water; ensuring individuals and communities have safe water to drink either from their home or from their local environment requires the consideration of multiple factors including individual risk perception. In collaboration with local leaders, semi-structured interviews (n = 99) were conducted over a two-year period in the Dene Tha’ First Nation and Kátł’odeeche First Nation to unpack the issue of risk perception and its meaning to local community members. These local metrics of risk perception including smell, taste, safety, health fears and level of concern were then used to explore patterns in other data on drinking water consumption patterns and bottled water use. The results are consistent with previous research related to water insecurity and indicate that both communities consume more bottled water than the average Canadian. Results also varied by jurisdiction; those in Alberta indicated much higher levels of concern and a greater degree of bottled water consumption.


2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Cameron ◽  
Rhéa Rocque ◽  
Kailey Penner ◽  
Ian Mauro

Abstract Background Despite scientific evidence that climate change has profound and far reaching implications for public health, translating this knowledge in a manner that supports citizen engagement, applied decision-making, and behavioural change can be challenging. This is especially true for complex vector-borne zoonotic diseases such as Lyme disease, a tick-borne disease which is increasing in range and impact across Canada and internationally in large part due to climate change. This exploratory research aims to better understand public risk perceptions of climate change and Lyme disease in order to increase engagement and motivate behavioural change. Methods A focus group study involving 61 participants was conducted in three communities in the Canadian Prairie province of Manitoba in 2019. Focus groups were segmented by urban, rural, and urban-rural geographies, and between participants with high and low levels of self-reported concern regarding climate change. Results Findings indicate a broad range of knowledge and risk perceptions on both climate change and Lyme disease, which seem to reflect the controversy and complexity of both issues in the larger public discourse. Participants in high climate concern groups were found to have greater climate change knowledge, higher perception of risk, and less skepticism than those in low concern groups. Participants outside of the urban centre were found to have more familiarity with ticks, Lyme disease, and preventative behaviours, identifying differential sources of resilience and vulnerability. Risk perceptions of climate change and Lyme disease were found to vary independently rather than correlate, meaning that high climate change risk perception did not necessarily indicate high Lyme disease risk perception and vice versa. Conclusions This research contributes to the growing literature framing climate change as a public health issue, and suggests that in certain cases climate and health messages might be framed in a way that strategically decouples the issue when addressing climate skeptical audiences. A model showing the potential relationship between Lyme disease and climate change perceptions is proposed, and implications for engagement on climate change health impacts are discussed.


2021 ◽  
pp. 135676672098786
Author(s):  
Melvin Prince ◽  
Young Kim

The aim of the study is to investigate the motivational effects of tourist traits and risk appraisal on tourist destination risk perception. Risk appraisal involves subjective estimates of vulnerability to a threat and the threat’s consequential severity. Fear levels influence both of these elements of risk appraisal. Individual differences in reactance proneness and risk aversion are introduced into the study model to more fully account for differences in travel destination risk perceptions. The study design involves US adults, who have used their passports for international travel in the past 5 years. Travel risk assessments were studied for four destination sites: London, Tokyo, Kuala Lumpur and Istanbul. A general structural model is developed to test hypotheses about antecedents and consequents of risk appraisal and destination risk perception.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (12) ◽  
pp. 5367
Author(s):  
Amirarsalan Rajabi ◽  
Alexander V. Mantzaris ◽  
Ece C. Mutlu ◽  
Ozlem O. Garibay

Governments, policy makers, and officials around the globe are working to mitigate the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic by making decisions that strive to save the most lives and impose the least economic costs. Making these decisions require comprehensive understanding of the dynamics by which the disease spreads. In traditional epidemiological models, individuals do not adapt their contact behavior during an epidemic, yet adaptive behavior is well documented (i.e., fear-induced social distancing). In this work we revisit Epstein’s “coupled contagion dynamics of fear and disease” model in order to extend and adapt it to explore fear-driven behavioral adaptations and their impact on efforts to combat the COVID-19 pandemic. The inclusion of contact behavior adaptation endows the resulting model with a rich dynamics that under certain conditions reproduce endogenously multiple waves of infection. We show that the model provides an appropriate test bed for different containment strategies such as: testing with contact tracing and travel restrictions. The results show that while both strategies could result in flattening the epidemic curve and a significant reduction of the maximum number of infected individuals; testing should be applied along with tracing previous contacts of the tested individuals to be effective. The results show how the curve is flattened with testing partnered with contact tracing, and the imposition of travel restrictions.


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