不精确的健康信念与健康行为

Imprecise health beliefs and health behavior

Journal of Health Economics · 2025
被引 0
人大 AABS 3

中文导读

调查了新冠疫情初期年轻人对健康结果的主观概率范围(信念不精确度),发现其个体差异大且不受人口特征解释;预期保护行为能降低不精确度的人,实际保护行为更多。

Abstract

This paper examines belief imprecision in the context of COVID-19, when uncertainty about health outcomes was widespread. We survey a sample of young adults a few months after the onset of the pandemic. We elicit individuals' minimum and maximum subjective probabilities of different health outcomes, and define belief imprecision as the range between these values. We document substantial heterogeneity in the degree of imprecision across respondents, which remains largely unexplained by standard demographic characteristics. To assess the behavioral impact of imprecise beliefs, we ask beliefs about future outcomes under hypothetical scenarios that feature different levels of protective behaviors. We find that individuals who expect protective behaviors to reduce not only the subjective probability of a negative health outcome, but also the degree of imprecision associated with it, behave more protectively.

健康信念模糊性健康行为COVID-19主观概率区间