1. Temporal shifts in Americans' risk perceptions of the Zika outbreak.
- Author
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Johnson, Branden B. and Mayorga, Marcus
- Subjects
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RISK perception , *TIME perception , *PANEL analysis , *EBOLA virus disease , *ZIKA virus , *MULTILEVEL models - Abstract
Cross-sectional surveys, despite their value, are unable to probe dynamics of risk perceptions over time. An earlier longitudinal panel study of Americans' views on Ebola risk inspired this partial replication on Americans' views of Zika risks, using multilevel modeling to assess temporal changes in these views and inter-individual factors affecting them, and to determine if similar factors were influential for both non-epidemics in the USA. Baseline Zika risk scores – as in the Ebola study – were influenced by dread of the Zika virus, perceptions of a near-miss outbreak, and perceived likelihood of an outbreak. Judgments of both personal risk and national risk from Zika declined significantly, and individual rates of news following predicted slower decline of perceived national risk in both cases. However, few other factors affected changes in Zika risk judgments, which did not replicate in a validation half-sample, whereas several factors slowed or increased the rate of decline in Ebola judgments of the U.S. risk. These differences might reflect differences in the diseases caused by these two viruses – e.g., Ebola's much greater lethality – but more longitudinal studies across multiple diseases will be needed to test that speculation. Benefits of such studies to health risk analysis outweigh the difficulties they pose. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2021
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