DCRI population health scientists conducted a discrete choice experiment to improve understanding of how people weigh risks associated with COVID-19.
A partisan split in reaction to COVID-19 has been widely publicized in the media—but new research from DCRI population health scientists suggests that it may not be that simple.
DCRI’s Shelby Reed, PhD; Reed Johnson, PhD; and Juan Marcos Gonzalez, PhD, designed a discrete choice experiment via a survey administered to a representative sample of U.S. residents in order to determine people’s willingness to take risks and accept trade-offs associated with COVID-19. Results were recently published in Value in Health.
The survey, which was completed by nearly 6,000 individuals between May 8 and 20, focused on four domains:
- COVID-19 infection (described by percentage of U.S. population that becomes infected through end of 2020)
- Duration of social distancing restrictions
- Depth of negative economic impacts (described by an increase in the percentage of U.S. households falling below the poverty line)
- Duration of negative economic impacts (described as number of years before the economy would return to where it was pre-pandemic)
The researchers used the answers to the survey to categorize respondents into four classes:
- 36 percent were “risk-minimizers” and did not want to accept any increase in COVID-19 infection risk.
- 26 percent were “waiters,” meaning that they favored delaying the reopening of nonessential businesses independent of COVID-19 risk levels.
- 25 percent were “recovery-supporters” who were mainly focused on the time it would take for economic recovery.
- The last group represented “openers” and were willing to accept the greatest COVID-19 risk in order for the economy to reopen as soon as possible.
Although political affiliation was the demographic characteristic most strongly associated with class membership, the survey results revealed complexity as to which groups were more likely to belong to specific classes. For example, both Democrats and Republicans were more likely to be among the risk-minimizers class in comparison to people of independent affiliation.
“We found that people’s willingness to accept specific trade-offs among health and non-health outcomes is not a simple question of political ideology,” the authors wrote.
Other demographic characteristics associated with class membership included race, household income, and employment status. Other findings include:
- Those with higher incomes were more likely to be in the recovery-supporters class, while individuals with lower income were more likely to be in the waiters class.
- Non-whites were more likely to be in the waiters class and were negatively associated with membership in the recovery-supporters and openers classes.
- Gender and level of education were not associated with which class a person would be a part of.
“With the third peak in the pandemic now upon us in the U.S, our study reveals that when faced with difficult tradeoffs between COVID-19 social-distancing restrictions and economic consequences, American’s views don’t simply track along political lines,” said Reed, DCRI therapeutic area lead for Population Health Sciences.