ArticleFrontiers in psychology2021
Beliefs and Risk Perceptions About COVID-19: Evidence From Two Successive French Representative Surveys During Lockdown.
Article in Frontiers in psychology, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 36 papers.
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Who cites it
36 citing papers in PubMed, 77 citations in OpenAlex.
- Refining the role of behavioural and social sciences in pandemic response post-COVID-19.Nature human behaviour · 2026Review
- Short report: association between self-reported COVID-19 experience and contemptuous beliefs about pandemic management among German citizens and healthcare professionals.Journal of public health (Oxford, England) · 2026Article
- The impact of COVID-19 infection experience on risk perception and preventive behaviour: a cohort study.Epidemiology and infection · 2026Article
- Article
- Why Do We Not Wear Masks Anymore during the COVID-19 Wave? Vaccination Precludes the Adoption of Personal Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions: A Quantitative Study of Taiwanese Residents.Medicina (Kaunas, Lithuania) · 2024Article
- Experiences of male irregular migrants during their migration process and reception in Spain: lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic.Frontiers in public health · 2024Article
- Impact of epidemic prevention policies on public vaccination willingness: empirical research in China.Frontiers in public health · 2024Article
- One year of COVID-19 in dental health services in Norway: psychological impact, risk perceptions and vaccination status.BMC health services research · 2023Article
- Suspecting the Figures: What Church Leaders Think About Government's Commitment to Combating COVID-19 in Nigeria.Journal of Asian and African studies · 2023Article
- Are distributional preferences for safety stable? A longitudinal analysis before and after the COVID-19 outbreak.Social science & medicine (1982) · 2023Article
- Sub-Saharan African communities' experiences and engagement with COVID-19 and the related control strategies in Antwerp, Belgium.International journal for equity in health · 2023Article
- Consumers' willingness to pay for health claims during the COVID-19 pandemic: A moderated mediation analysis.Journal of agriculture and food research · 2023Article
- Geographic and demographic variation in worry about extreme heat and COVID-19 risk in summer 2020.Applied geography (Sevenoaks, England) · 2023Article
- Article
- Health-related social media use and COVID-19 anxiety in adolescence: health anxiety as covariate and moderator.Frontiers in psychology · 2023Article
- The scientistic worldview and its relationships with fear of COVID, conspiracy beliefs, preventive behaviors, and attitudes towards vaccines during the COVID-19 pandemic in a Polish sample.Current issues in personality psychology · 2023Article
- How do online users perceive health risks during public health emergencies? Empirical evidence from China.Frontiers in psychology · 2023Article
- Profiles of older adults according to their life and food-related life satisfaction during the COVID-19 pandemic: the importance of the social environment.Frontiers in public health · 2023Article
- Vaccinated and Unvaccinated Risk Perceptions and Motivations for COVID-19 Preventive Measures Based on EPPM-A Polish Qualitative Pilot Study.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2022Article
- Perception risk, preventive behaviors and assessing the relationship between their various dimensions: A cross-sectional study in the Covid-19 peak period.International journal of disaster risk reduction : IJDRR · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors at 4 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundThe outbreak of COVID-19 has been a major interrupting event, challenging how societies and individuals deal with risk. An essential determinant of the virus' spread is a series of individual decisions, such as wearing face masks in public space. Those decisions depend on trade-offs between costs (or benefits) and risks, and beliefs are key to explain these.
methodsWe elicit beliefs about the COVID-19 pandemic during lockdown in France by means of surveys asking French citizens about their belief of the infection fatality ratio (IFR) for COVID-19, own risk to catch the disease, risk as perceived by others, and expected prevalence rate. Those self-assessments were measured twice during lockdown: about 2 weeks after lockdown started and about 2 weeks before lockdown ended. We also measured the quality of these beliefs with respect to available evidence at the time of the surveys, allowing us to assess the calibration of beliefs based on risk-related socio-demographics. Finally, comparing own risk to expected prevalence rates in the two successive surveys provides a dynamic view of comparative optimism with respect to the disease.
resultsThe risk perceptions are rather high in absolute terms and they increased between the two surveys. We found no evidence for an impact of personal experience with COVID-19 on beliefs and lower risk perceptions of the IFR when someone in the respondent's family has been diagnosed with a disease. Answers to survey 1 confirmed this pattern with a clear indication that respondents were optimistic about their chances to catch COVID-19. However, in survey 2, respondents revealed comparative pessimism.
conclusionThe results show that respondents overestimated the probabilities to catch or die from COVID-19, which is not unusual and does not necessarily reflect a strong deviation from rational behavior. While a rational model explains why the own risk to catch COVID-19 rose between the two surveys, it does not explain why the subjective assessment of the IFR remained stable. The comparative pessimism in survey 2 was likely due to a concomitant increase in the respondents' perceived chances to catch the disease and a decreased expected prevalence rate.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.