Catastrophic Risk: Waking Up to the Reality of a Pandemic?
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Ó 2020 EcoHealth Alliance
Original Contribution
Catastrophic Risk: Waking Up to the Reality of a Pandemic? Jamison Pike,1 Jason F. Shogren,2 David Aadland,2 W. Kip Viscusi,3 David Finnoff,2 Alexandre Skiba,2 and Peter Daszak1 1
Ecohealth Alliance, New York, NY 10001 Department of Economics, University of Wyoming, Laramie, WY 82071 3 Vanderbilt University Law School, Nashville, TN 37203 2
Abstract: Will a major shock awaken the US citizens to the threat of catastrophic pandemic risk? Using a natural experiment administered both before and after the 2014 West African Ebola Outbreak, our evidence suggests ‘‘no.’’ Our results show that prior to the Ebola scare, the US citizens were relatively complacent and placed a low relative priority on public spending to prepare for a pandemic disease outbreak relative to an environmental disaster risk (e.g., Fukushima) or a terrorist attack (e.g., 9/11). After the Ebola scare, the average citizen did not over-react to the risk. This flat reaction was unexpected given the well-known availability heuristic—people tend to over-weigh judgments of events more heavily toward more recent information. In contrast, the average citizen continued to value pandemic risk less relative to terrorism or environmental risk. Keywords: Risk, Pandemic, Ebola, Survey, Risk–risk tradeoffs
Will a major shock awaken the US citizens to the threat of catastrophic pandemic risk? The current challenges to reduce the health risks from the pandemic COVID-19 suggests the answer is ‘‘no.’’ Many US citizens and policymakers at the national and local levels chose to downplay or ignore the COVID-19 pandemic for weeks before the stock market crash and the number of deaths began to increase at an increasing rate (Monbiot 2020; Russonello 2020). Why? To better understand this behavior, we step back and explore pandemic risk trade-offs using the case of pre- and post-Ebola in the mid-2010s. Using a natural experiment, we surveyed the US citizens
Electronic supplementary material: The online version of this article (https://doi. org/10.1007/s10393-020-01479-8) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
Correspondence to: Jason F. Shogren, e-mail: [email protected]
about their risk–risk trade-offs before and immediately after the highly visible 2014 Ebola scare (Viscusi et al. 1991; Viscusi 2009). Using a unique survey administered both before and after the 2014 West African Ebola Outbreak, we ask the US citizens to value fatalities from pandemic risks compared to deaths from environmental disaster risks (e.g., Bhopal, Exxon, Deepwater, Fukushima) and or a terrorist attack (e.g., 9/11). Working with Wyoming Survey and Analysis Center (WYSAC), we administered a computer-based questionnaire. After a year of pretests, in July 2013, WYSAC implemented the survey instrument in a national study distributed across the USA. The sample was a nationally representative web-based panel recruited by the online market research company, uSamp, based out of Los Angeles, California. Participants took
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