Communicating COVID-19 exposure risk with an interactive website counteracts risk misestimation.

Autor: Sinclair AH; Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, Duke University, Durham, NC, United States of America., Taylor MK; Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, Duke University, Durham, NC, United States of America., Brandel-Tanis F; School of City and Regional Planning, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, United States of America.; School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, United States of America., Davidson A; School of Biological Sciences, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, United States of America., Chande AT; Applied Bioinformatics Laboratory, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, United States of America., Rishishwar L; Applied Bioinformatics Laboratory, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, United States of America., Andris C; School of City and Regional Planning, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, United States of America.; School of Interactive Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, United States of America., Adcock RA; Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, Duke University, Durham, NC, United States of America.; Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Duke University, Durham, NC, United States of America.; Department of Neurobiology, Duke University, Durham, NC, United States of America., Weitz JS; School of Biological Sciences, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, United States of America.; School of Physics, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, United States of America.; Institut de Biologie, École Normale Supérieure, Paris, France., Samanez-Larkin GR; Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, Duke University, Durham, NC, United States of America., Beckett SJ; School of Biological Sciences, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, United States of America.
Jazyk: angličtina
Zdroj: PloS one [PLoS One] 2023 Oct 05; Vol. 18 (10), pp. e0290708. Date of Electronic Publication: 2023 Oct 05 (Print Publication: 2023).
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0290708
Abstrakt: During the COVID-19 pandemic, individuals depended on risk information to make decisions about everyday behaviors and public policy. Here, we assessed whether an interactive website influenced individuals' risk tolerance to support public health goals. We collected data from 11,169 unique users who engaged with the online COVID-19 Event Risk Tool (https://covid19risk.biosci.gatech.edu/) between 9/22/21 and 1/22/22. The website featured interactive elements, including a dynamic risk map, survey questions, and a risk quiz with accuracy feedback. After learning about the risk of COVID-19 exposure, participants reported being less willing to participate in events that could spread COVID-19, especially for high-risk large events. We also uncovered a bias in risk estimation: Participants tended to overestimate the risk of small events but underestimate the risk of large events. Importantly, even participants who voluntarily sought information about COVID risks tended to misestimate exposure risk, demonstrating the need for intervention. Participants from liberal-leaning counties were more likely to use the website tools and more responsive to feedback about risk misestimation, indicating that political partisanship influences how individuals seek and engage with COVID-19 information. Lastly, we explored temporal dynamics and found that user engagement and risk estimation fluctuated over the course of the Omicron variant outbreak. Overall, we report an effective large-scale method for communicating viral exposure risk; our findings are relevant to broader research on risk communication, epidemiological modeling, and risky decision-making.
Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
(Copyright: © 2023 Sinclair et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)
Databáze: MEDLINE
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