Abstract
Covid-19 pandemic is exerting a tragic impact all around the world. First-person experience of life-threatening and stressful events can modify individuals' risk perception, and, consequently, risk-taking behaviours. Here we investigated risk-taking profiles in 130 Italian residents, and compared healthcare to non-healthcare workers, during the lockdown phase. We ad hoc developed the "Covid-19 Risk Task", including the classic monetary Holt-Laury Paired Lottery Task (Monetary Condition, MC) and two new ecological conditions exploring Covid-19 related risk-taking aptitudes in relation to different health (Health Status Condition, HsC) and employment (Employment Status Condition, EsC) outcomes. Results showed that, in the whole sample, individuals were more risk-averse in MC than in HsC and EsC. Moreover, a payoff increase produced a shift toward more risk-averse behaviours in MC, but not in HsC and EsC, where we found an opposite trend suggesting a more risk-loving behaviour. Finally, we found that healthcare workers were significantly less risk-averse compared to non-healthcare workers in EsC, but not in MC and HsC. These findings provided evidence of the possible effects of Covid-19 outbreak on risk-taking aptitudes. The negative impact on human choices and, consequently, on the whole world economy of this catastrophic life event must not be underestimated.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 22236 |
Journal | Sci. Rep. |
Volume | 10 |
Issue number | 1 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - Dec 17 2020 |
Keywords
- Adult
- Aged
- COVID-19/psychology
- Disease Outbreaks/statistics & numerical data
- Female
- Health Personnel/psychology
- Humans
- Italy
- Male
- Middle Aged
- Pandemics/statistics & numerical data
- Risk-Taking
- SARS-CoV-2/pathogenicity
- Unemployment/psychology