BETWEEN MARCH 2020 AND DECEMBER 2021, the media reported a wide variety of perplexing behaviours. Day after day there was footage of people attending large indoor activities or going for dangerous high-speed joyrides on highways. Why, in the midst of a global emergency, would this happen?
Despite extensive research on decision-making under risk, we know very little about how an extreme shock such as COVID-19 might influence people’s attitude toward risk in their daily lives. In a recent paper with Rotman PhD candidate Ying Zeng, we examined how the pandemic impacted people’s risk tolerance.
We wondered: how might the general risk attitude differ between people who were severely impacted by the pandemic versus those less severely impacted? This topic is particularly relevant because looking ahead, misunderstanding or neglecting changes in public risk-taking could lead to ineffective or even counterproductive policies and communications.
Risky Choices: A Backgrounder
Traditional risk-return decision-making models treat ‘perceived riskiness’ as a variable that differs between individuals and as a function of the context. Put simply, these models describe risk-taking as involving a trade-off between perceived benefits and perceived risks, where the most desirable combination is ‘low perceived risk and high perceived benefits.’ Within this mindset, risk perception should decrease risk-taking and would be influenced by factors including the individual’s
