Risk Perception in a Real-World Situation (COVID-19): How It Changes From 18 to 87 Years Old

Alessia Rosi,Martine Vallarino,Filippo Rapisarda,Serena Lecce,Elena Cavallini,Floris Tijmen Van Vugt,Tomaso Vecchi,Irene Ceccato

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2021.646558

Abstract

Studies on age-related differences in risk perception in a real-world situation, such as the recent COVID-19 outbreak, showed that the risk perception of getting COVID-19 tends to decrease as age increases. This finding raised the question on what factors could explain risk perception in older adults. The present study examined age-related differences in risk perception in the early stages of COVID-19 lockdown, analyzing variables that can explain the differences in perception of risk at different ages. A total of 1,765 adults aged between 18 and 87 years old completed an online survey assessing perceived risk severity and risk vulnerability of getting COVID-19, sociodemographic status, emotional state, experience relating to COVID-19, and physical health status. Results showed that the older the participants, the lower the perceived vulnerability to getting COVID-19, but the higher the perceived severity. Different predictors explain the perception of risk severity and vulnerability at different ages. Overall, self-reported anxiety over the pandemic is a crucial predictor in explaining risk perceptions in all age groups. Theoretical and practical implications of the empirical findings are discussed.

Highlights

Negative events are a part of life, and the likelihood or severity we ascribe to them affects how we act and feel in relation to these events
Risk Perception We developed a questionnaire based on prior studies on risk perception during the previous pandemic influenza (Bults et al, 2011) in order to measure (Table 2): (a) risk severity, i.e., how serious contracting the virus would be for a person’s health, and (b) risk vulnerability, i.e., a person’s perception of the risk to contract the virus
Perceived anxiety for COVID-19 was unrelated to age (p = 0.129)

Summary

Introduction

Negative events are a part of life, and the likelihood or severity we ascribe to them affects how we act and feel in relation to these events. It is important to understand what governs risk perception, especially so in the case of emerging realities such as the recent COVID-19 outbreak. Two models in the field of health, the Protection Motivation Theory (PMT; Rogers, 1983) and the Health Belief Model (HBM; Becker, 1974), have proposed a distinction between two different aspects of risk perception: the subjective probability of contracting a health condition (perceived vulnerability), and the degree to which we are concerned (perceived severity) about its consequences. Few studies have examined the age-related differences in risk perception using hypothetical reallife situations (e.g., Hanoch et al, 2018; Sun and Sun, 2019). The COVID-19 outbreak gave researchers the opportunity to focus on the perception of risk across the lifespan applied to

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Conclusion