Media coverage and pandemic behavior: Evidence from Sweden
研究了瑞典媒体报道对个人疫情期间行为的影响，发现提及新冠的报道显著减少了工作场所和休闲场所访问，增加了居家时间，且影响因果成立。
We study the effect of media coverage on individual behavior during a public health crisis. For this purpose, we collect a unique dataset of 200,000 newspaper articles about the Covid-19 pandemic from Sweden-one of the few countries that did not impose lockdowns or curfews. We show that mentions of Covid-19 significantly lowered the number of visits to workplaces and retail and recreation areas, while increasing the duration of stays in residential locations. Using two different identification strategies, we show that these effects are causal. The impacts are largest when Covid-19 news stories are more locally relevant, more visible and more factual. We find larger behavioral effects for articles that reference crisis managers (as opposed to medical experts) and contain explicit public health advice. These results have wider implications for the design of public communications and the value of the local media.