Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/237960 
Year of Publication: 
2020
Series/Report no.: 
ESRI Working Paper No. 689
Publisher: 
The Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI), Dublin
Abstract: 
How do people perceive and integrate multiple contextual risk factors for COVID-19 infection? We elicited risk perceptions from a nationally representative sample of the public (N = 800) using three psychologically-distinct tasks. Responses were compared to a sample of medical experts who completed the same tasks. The public underestimated the risk associated with environmental factors (such as whether a gathering takes place indoors or outdoors) and the implications when multiple risk factors are present. Our results are consistent with a heuristic simply to 'avoid people' and with a coarse (e.g. 'safe or unsafe') classification of social settings. A further task, completed only by the general public sample, generated novel evidence that when the risk of infection competes against a risk in another domain (e.g. a different medical risk), people perceive a lower likelihood of contracting the virus. The results have implications for public health communications and psychological theory.
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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