Assessing the Relationship between Pandemic Concerns and Devaluing Delayed Consequences

Abstract

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, U.S. citizens have largely made personal risk-benefit decisions for themselves. People’s everyday decisions about life activities now include a cost-benefit analysis involving probabilistic risk of disease associated with probabilistic disease severity. It is apparent that people have different societal or personal concerns and make different risk assessments in response to the virus. The area of behavioral economics provides an approach to understanding decision making that incorporates psychological and economic principles. This approach seeks to understand how specific behavioral mechanisms influence choice behavior and can account for individual differences. Among these mechanisms, the current research will investigate delay discounting (how positive or negative outcomes are devalued as they are delayed) and the reported levels of societal concerns stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic. People who place more value on long-term, delayed consequences might be more concerned about negative side-effects from the pandemic – some of which are extended into the future. Through this analysis, we may be able to better understand personal risk decision-making strategies that have been made throughout the pandemic.