Abstract
Access to information via social media is one of the biggest differentiators of public health crises today. During the early stages of the Covid-19 outbreak in January 2020, we conducted an experiment in Wuhan, China to assess the impact of viral social media content on pro-social and trust behaviours and preferences towards risk taking with known and unknown probabilities. Prior to the experiment, participants viewed one of two videos that had been widely and anonymously shared on Chinese social media: a central government leader visiting a local hospital and supermarket, or health care volunteers transiting to Wuhan. In a control condition, participants watched a Neutral video, unrelated to the crisis. Viewing one of the leadership or volunteer videos leads to higher levels of pro-sociality and lesser willingness to take risks in an ambiguous situation relative to the control condition. The leadership video, however, induces lower levels of trust. We provide evidence from two post-experiment surveys that the video’s impact on pro-sociality is modulated by influencing the viewer’s affective emotional state.
Highlights
On January 23, 2020, local authorities in China imposed a full lockdown of Wuhan city in response to the emergence of a novel coronavirus and associated disease, Covid-19
ultimatum game (UG) acceptance rates are lower in the Neutral video condition in response to the reduced offers, higher variability means that the pairwise differences are not significant (p value = 0.15 and p value = 0.15, respectively, nL = 20, nV = 20 and nN = 19)
In a further set of regressions, we find no significant impact of the Leadership or Volunteer video on risk preferences and prisoner’s dilemma game (PD) cooperation rates (Table S3), nor on pooled risk and ambiguity decisions in a random effects model (Table S4). 12 We are grateful to the editors for this suggestion
Summary
On January 23, 2020, local authorities in China imposed a full lockdown of Wuhan city in response to the emergence of a novel coronavirus and associated disease, Covid-19. Our study consists of an economic experiment that measures the behavioural impact of watching viral social media videos, and two follow-up surveys that assess the emotional states induced by the content of those same videos. Wuhan-based students complete a panel of decision tasks to measure the effects of crisis-related social media video stimuli on their pro-social, cooperative and trusting behaviour, as well as their preferences towards risk taking with known and unknown probabilities. The second of these videos shows health care volunteers from other provinces in transit to Wuhan ( “Volunteer video”) Both videos were circulating widely and anonymously among chat groups on the Chinese social media application WeChat at the time of the experiment.
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