News that takes your breath away: risk perceptions during an outbreak of vaping-related lung injuries
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News that takes your breath away: risk perceptions during an outbreak of vaping-related lung injuries Dhaval Dave 1 & Daniel Dench 2 & Donald Kenkel 3 & Alan Mathios 3 & Hua Wang 3 # Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract We study the impact of new information on people’s perceptions of the risks of ecigarettes. In September 2019 the U.S. experienced an outbreak of e-cigarette, or vaping, associated lung injuries (EVALI). The EVALI outbreak created an information shock, which was followed by additional new information in a later CDC recommendation. We use data on consumer risk perceptions from two sets of surveys conducted before (HINTS survey data) and during the EVALI outbreak (Google Survey data). The empirical model examines changes in risk perceptions during the early crisis period when the CDC was warning consumers that they should avoid all vaping products and during a later period when the message was refined and focused on a narrower set of illegal vaping products that contain THC (the main psychoactive compound in marijuana). Econometric results suggest that the immediate impact of the first information shock was to significantly increase the fraction of respondents who perceived ecigarettes as more harmful than smoking. As the outbreak subsided and the CDC recommendation changed to emphasize the role of THC e-cigarette products, ecigarette risk perceptions were only partially revised downwards. Individuals who had higher risk perceptions showed a weaker response to the first information shock but were more likely to later revise their risk perceptions downwards. We conclude the paper by discussing the public policy issues that stem from having risk perceptions of e-cigarettes relative to combustible cigarettes remain at these elevated levels where a substantial portion of consumers believe that e-cigarettes are more harmful than cigarettes. Keywords Information . Smoking . E-cigarette . Vaping . Risk-perception . EVALI . Lung
injury . Health JEL classifications D8 . D18 . D83 . H12 . I12 . I18 . K0
* Donald Kenkel [email protected] Extended author information available on the last page of the article
Journal of Risk and Uncertainty
1 Introduction The dissemination of evolving science about health risks related to food and drug products has enormous potential to influence consumer welfare. In typical markets consumers obtain information about product risk from a variety of sources that include the product’s manufacturer through advertising and any associated required warning statements, dissemination in the news media of the results of scientific studies regarding product risk, government pronouncements from agencies such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Surgeon General, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and finally through broad social and conventional media coverage of such risks. All of these sources of information have the potential to influence risk perceptions of the product, and
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