吓退还是吓死？疾病风险下的宿命论反应
Scared Straight or Scared to Death? Fatalism in Response to Disease Risks
The Economic Journal · 2025 · [{"name": "Jason Kerwin", "affiliation": ["IZA - Institute of Labor Economics", "University of Washington", "Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab"]}]
中文摘要
本文表明，人们对疾病风险的反应可能具有“宿命论”特征：更高的风险信念可能导致更多而非更少的风险行为。直观而言，这是因为较高的风险信念不仅会提高感染该疾病的概率（从而提高风险行为的边际成本），还会提高个体认为自己已经感染的主观概率（从而降低风险行为的边际成本）。我通过随机提供有关马拉维艾滋病病毒（HIV）传播真实（较低）平均风险的信息，检验宿命论。与理性宿命论的预测一致，该处理使性行为平均略有上升，但对初始风险信念较高的人群——尤其是基线性行为水平较高者——性行为大幅下降。
Abstract
This paper shows that responses to disease risks can be ‘fatalistic’: higher risk beliefs can lead to more risk-taking rather than less. Intuitively, this can occur because high risk beliefs raise not only the chance of contracting the disease (which raises the marginal cost of risk-taking), but also the perceived chance that you are already infected (which lowers the marginal cost). I test for fatalism by randomly providing information about the true (low) average risk of HIV transmission in Malawi. Consistent with rational fatalism, the treatment causes sexual activity to rise slightly on average, but decline sharply for people with high initial risk beliefs—especially those with high baseline levels of sexual activity.