Internal Preference Research Articles

Ideal concentration of turmeric to be added to artisanal cassava flour according to consumer preference

In the artisanal manufacture of yellow cassava flour, in the North region of Brazil, it is common to add turmeric. However, there are no recommendations on this process considering the preference of consumers. The present study proposes to determine this ideal concentration of turmeric that should be added to cassava flour based on consumers’ preference. Samples were produced with 0, 0.05, 0.10, 0.15, and 0.20% concentrations of turmeric in the flour. The flours were evaluated for moisture, ash, ether extract, fiber, protein, acidity, pH, aw, and instrumental color. Sensory evaluation was analyzed in the cities of Rio Branco and Cruzeiro do Sul, state of Acre, Brazil. The addition of turmeric promoted an increase in acidity and a reduction in moisture and water activity of the flours. The intensity of the yellow color increased as higher concentrations of turmeric were added. Sensory tests using the hedonic, ideal, and purchase intention scales and internal preference mapping revealed differences between the two municipalities in terms of preference of consumers. In Rio Branco, there was a preference for flours with intermediate concentrations of turmeric, from 0.05 to 0.15%, while Cruzeiro do Sul recommended a concentration of 0.05% of turmeric.

Comparison of open comments and check-all-that-apply to collect reasons for liking and disliking chocolates in preference mapping

Collecting Open Comments (OC) is a common way to learn about the product features that consumers like and dislike in internal preference mapping studies. OC has the advantage to provide a direct answer to the question “What do you like/dislike about this product?” without consumers. However, because OC does not suggest any sensory terms, consumers sometimes struggle to properly verbalize their perceptions leading to data and information that are difficult to interpret and translate into product improvement recommendations. In addition, the encoding of OC is a cumbersome, time-consuming, and possibly expensive task depending on the context of study. In this context, we explored the use of the Check-All-That-Apply (CATA) method as an alternative to OC to collect reasons for like and dislike reported by consumers. We conducted two parallel studies in which respondents evaluated 6 out of 8 milk chocolates using an incomplete block design. The only noticeable difference between the two studies was that respondents reported reasons for liking and disliking using either OC (n = 204) or CATA (n = 157). Results did not show any striking difference between mean overall liking scores and taste clusters in both studies. The drivers of liking and disliking associated with each product were also largely consistent, although some differences in citation rates and attitudes were noted. For instance, respondents tended to disregard appearance and texture in favor of flavor with OC as compared to CATA. In addition, the drivers of disliking provided by OC were less diverse and less frequently cited than in CATA. Overall, our results suggest that CATA is a promising alternative to OC for liking-oriented product description provided that special care is taken to build a relevant list of CATA terms.

Externally Provided Rewards Increase Internal Preference, but Not as Much as Preferred Ones Without Extrinsic Rewards

AbstractIt is well known that preferences are formed through choices, known as choice-induced preference change (CIPC). However, whether value learned through externally provided rewards influences the preferences formed through CIPC remains unclear. To address this issue, we used tasks for decision-making guided by reward provided by the external environment (externally guided decision-making; EDM) and for decision-making guided by one’s internal preference (internally guided decision-making; IDM). In the IDM task, we presented stimuli with learned value in the EDM and novel stimuli to examine whether the value in the EDM affects preferences. Stimuli reinforced by rewards given in the EDM were reflected in the IDM’s initial preference and further increased through CIPC in the IDM. However, such stimuli were not as strongly preferred as the most preferred novel stimulus in the IDM (superiority of intrinsically learned values; SIV), suggesting that the values learned by the EDM and IDM differ. The underlying process of this phenomenon is discussed in terms of the fundamental self-hypothesis.

Beyond Reality: Exploring the effect of different virtual reality environments on visual assessment of cakes

Visual assessment triggers physiological, emotional, and cognitive responses in consumer behavior. This confluence of signals can be influenced by context, which plays a crucial role in eating behavior. The strategies used to evoke scenarios that enhance ecological validity in sensory experiences have evolved in the last years to include immersive technologies and virtual reality (VR) to simulate the complexity of the real world and predict consumer preferences. This study explored VR's effect on visual liking and hedonic responses of five virtual cakes in two virtual contexts designed with advanced 3D modeling and photogrammetry techniques to ensure high realism and immersion. Although the virtual contexts themselves did not impact liking ratings, the variables “context-cake,“ ”age,“ and “subjective hunger” had a significant effect on the visual liking of cakes. A Check-All-That-Apply (CATA) questionnaire showed significant differences in responses for various terms related to the intrinsic and extrinsic characteristics of the five cakes. Finally, the internal preference map separated two consumer patterns of visual liking: traditional versus innovative.

Exploring the Determinants of Preference for Visiting Beauty & Health Multi-Shop Operate by One Person

Purpose: A beauty health multi-shop is a place where two or more beauty and health-related professional services are managed, and it is divided into a multi-person multi-shop where multiple managers manage users and a one-person multi-shop that is operated by a single person. This study was conducted to conduct an objec-tive and in-depth exploration of how the preference determinants of beauty health one-person multi-shop cus-tomers are organized. Method: As a research method, the first open-ended survey was conducted, and based on this, preliminary questions were constructed through content analysis, and the second closed-ended survey was conducted. The first survey was conducted on 95 adults with experience in using beauty and health one-person multi-shops, and the second survey was conducted on 212 questionnaires with the same experience, and the final preference de-terminants were derived through exploratory factor analysis and reliability verification. Results: The results of the study were implied by 17 sub-constructs, 6 constructs and 1 other factor. The first three internal preference determinants were identified as manager expertise, customer care environment, and affordability, and the second three external preference determinants were identified as diversity, convenience, and member retention services. Conclusion: Currently, in Korea, the beauty health industry is based on the health industry and the beauty industry is being mixed and converged, creating new demands that are connected to health, culture, emotions, and aesthetic pursuits. The results of this study provide an objective explanation of the determinants of consum-ers' preference for visiting beauty and health one-person multi shops, so it is expected to be used as a resource for various operational measures in the future.

Exploring the Determinants of Preference for Visiting Beauty & Health Multi-Shop Operate by One Person

Purpose: A beauty health multi-shop is a place where two or more beauty and health-related professional services are managed, and it is divided into a multi-person multi-shop where multiple managers manage users and a one-person multi-shop that is operated by a single person. This study was conducted to conduct an objec-tive and in-depth exploration of how the preference determinants of beauty health one-person multi-shop cus-tomers are organized. Method: As a research method, the first open-ended survey was conducted, and based on this, preliminary questions were constructed through content analysis, and the second closed-ended survey was conducted. The first survey was conducted on 95 adults with experience in using beauty and health one-person multi-shops, and the second survey was conducted on 212 questionnaires with the same experience, and the final preference de-terminants were derived through exploratory factor analysis and reliability verification. Results: The results of the study were implied by 17 sub-constructs, 6 constructs and 1 other factor. The first three internal preference determinants were identified as manager expertise, customer care environment, and affordability, and the second three external preference determinants were identified as diversity, convenience, and member retention services. Conclusion: Currently, in Korea, the beauty health industry is based on the health industry and the beauty industry is being mixed and converged, creating new demands that are connected to health, culture, emotions, and aesthetic pursuits. The results of this study provide an objective explanation of the determinants of consum-ers' preference for visiting beauty and health one-person multi shops, so it is expected to be used as a resource for various operational measures in the future.

Assessing Sensory Attributes and Properties of Infant Formula Milk Powder Driving Consumers’ Preference

Infant formula milk powder (IFMP) is an excellent substitute for breast milk. It is known that the composition of maternal food during pregnancy and lactation and exposure level to food during infancy highly influence taste development in early infancy. However, little is known about the sensory aspects of infant formula. Herein, the sensory characteristics of 14 brands of infant formula segment 1 marketed in China were evaluated, and differences in preferences for IFMPs were determined. Descriptive sensory analysis was performed by well-trained panelists to determine the sensory characteristics of evaluated IFMPs. The brands S1 and S3 had significantly lower astringency and fishy flavor compared to the other brands. Moreover, it was found that S6, S7 and S12 had lower milk flavor scores but higher butter scores. Furthermore, internal preference mapping revealed that the attributes fatty flavor, aftertaste, saltiness, astringency, fishy flavor and sourness negatively contributed to consumer preference in all three clusters. Considering that the majority of consumers prefer milk powders rich in aroma, sweet and steamed flavors, these attributes could be considered for enhancement by the food industry.

Avaliação nutricional e aceitação pelo consumidor de extrato de soja de cultivares especiais e convencionais

Abstract The soymilk is a ready-to-eat, nutritious and naturally cholesterol-free product. Several soybean specialty cultivars were developed in Brazil in order to increase the human consumption of soybean products. The aim of this work was to evaluate the nutritional composition and consumer acceptance of soymilk from three soybean cultivars with special features such as high-protein and isoflavone contents, mild flavor and lipoxygenase-free compared to three conventional ones. The soymilk was obtained after blanching with a bicarbonate solution, grinding, centrifugation and pasteurization. The physicochemical and nutritional evaluation data were analyzed using Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) and Tukey’s test to check differences among means, and the consumer data through cluster analysis and internal preference mapping. The lipoxygenases were inactivated after thermal processing. There were significant differences among soybean cultivars and soymilks related to the protein, isoflavones, oil, and sugar contents and soymilk yield (p < 0.05). The BRS 133 and BRS 284 cultivars and soymilks presented the highest total isoflavone content (p < 0.05). Regarding the overall consumer acceptance, there were significant differences among cultivars (p < 0.05) with means ranging from 5.9 to 6.7 and the lower score was obtained by BRS 267. However, the cluster analysis identified three consumer segments according to preference similarity. The cultivars BRS 284 and BRS 267 reached the highest mean among the consumers of segment 1 (6.8 and 6.7 respectively). The consumers of segment 2 preferred the cultivar without lipoxygenases, BRS 213 (mean of 7.5) while segment 3 preferred the BRS 133 (mean of 7.4). The process of blanching of soybean with bicarbonate solution, grinding with boiling water and pasteurization mitigated the differences between conventional and specialty cultivars and the six cultivars evaluated were suitable for soymilk production.

A unifying approach to wheat beer flavour by chemometric analyses. Could we speak of ‘terroir’?

Raw materials are recognized to affect the sensory profile of ‘Blanche’ craft beers and their ‘terroir’. Two common wheat (Triticum aestivum, L.) were harvested in three experimental fields with different pedo-climatic conditions and altitudes, and then used for beer production. The taste and flavour of wheat beers were analysed by sensory (panel and consumer test) and SPME GC-MS analyses. Panel dataset was processed by multivariate statistical analyses: a principal component analysis (PCA) revealed that formulation was the main source of variation of sensory profile in wheat beers and a generalized Procrustes analysis (GPA) showed how wheat origin affected the sensory profiles of wheat craft beers based on the consensus among panelists. Moreover, a partial least-squares discriminant analysis (PLS-DA) on VOCs permitted to discriminate and characterize beers selected by a panel-driven approach. By comparing panel and VOCs results, it was possible to highlight that higher altitudes of wheat cultivation determine an increase of pleasant notes such as fruity and herbal. A PCA on consumer test data confirmed that formulation was the main factor affecting liking scores and that the preferences were affected by age, involvement and frequency of use. An internal preference map combining panel and consumer data suggested that the majority of preferences are driven by a few key sensory attributes. Differences in liking among the considered beers revealed two main consumer groups.

The institutional and political roots of complex policies: Evidence from the European Union

AbstractThe complexity of public policies has repeatedly been identified as a key challenge for modern democracies. Yet, we know only very little about the origins of this complexity. Controlling for functional and legal explanations, this article investigates whether complex policies have distinct institutional and political origins. The study builds on the assumption that complex policies are communicated in more complex language and uses textual data from 1771 legislative proposals issued by the European Commission since 1994 to demonstrate that the complexity of public policies is strongly tied to institutional and political costs of policy formulation. Collegial cabinets formulate more complex policies whenever they face more inclusive decision‐making processes and struggle with higher internal preference bias and heterogeneity. The implications of these findings reach far beyond the political system of the European Union and highlight that to a considerable degree, complex policies are the price of inclusive democratic decision making.

The Creative Thinking Profile: Measuring Internal Preferences for Multiple Creative Thinking Styles

Creative problem solving in organizations is getting more complex, and yet theory on creative thinking has remained stagnant as scholars have argued for the need to better understand the multifaceted nature of creativity. This paper helps advance research on this topic by developing and validating a new scale that measures individual preferences for multiple creative thinking styles. Drawing upon a wide range of literature that has theorized about several cognitive processes people can use to generate novel and useful ideas on a task, we found evidence through psychometric research that people can have distinct preferences for three different thinking styles, which we call divergent thinking, bricoleurgent thinking, and emergent thinking. Furthermore, when validating this scale through an experiment, we found that each style seems to be more strongly aligned with different underlying structures of a creative task, which varied based on the degree to which the problem was either open versus closed and the resources available were either abundant versus constrained. Altogether, this paper makes both theoretical and empirical contributions by developing a scale that integrates multiple thinking styles into a creative thinking profile, which can help scholars better understand—and study—the complex nature of creativity in future research.

A consensus model for large-scale group decision making based on empathetic network analysis and its application in strategical selection of COVID-19 vaccines

Effective COVID-19 vaccines are the best weapons against the COVID-19 pandemic and have become a strategic property of local governments. Experienced experts need to be invited to improve the accuracy of COVID-19 vaccine selection; such a selection process can be regarded as a large-scale group decision-making (LSGDM) problem. Many LSGDM models have been proposed in order to overcome the non-independence of experts. However, the objective empathetic relationships among experts which can affect decision results have been ignored. To fill these gaps, this article proposes a LSGDM method based on empathetic network analysis (ENA). First, we identify the dissociative empathetic network, central empathetic network, and general empathetic network. Then, we determine the results of internal preference evolution from the perspective of preference interactions. We adopt the fuzzy c-means (FCM) clustering algorithm to divide a large group of experts into several subgroups according to the empathetic centrality of experts, and then propose three kinds of feedback mechanisms with respect to the empathetic relationships for central, dissociative, and general empathetic networks to improve the quality of the consensus-reaching process. Finally, an illustrative example related to the selection of COVID-19 vaccines is presented to validate the proposed model.

Oyster shell powder (Crassostrea gasar): evaluation of its potential as a natural and sustainable source of calcium in bread

PurposeThe study aims to analyze the composition and mineral profile of oyster shell powder (OSP) and assess its potential as a sustainable source of calcium.Design/methodology/approachA total of two batches of OSP with different particle sizes had been evaluated for centesimal and mineral composition and microbiological quality. OSP with smaller particles (0.85 mm) was used in the production of bread: standard bread (SB) (0%), fortified bread (FB1) (3%) and FB2 (4%). Centesimal and mineral composition and sensory acceptance had been performed. The internal preference map had been constructed using principal component analysis. The Just About Right data and the influence of sensory attributes on bread acceptance had been assessed by a penalty analysis test.FindingsOSP-0.85 mm had calcium content (478.47 ± 2.37 mg.g-1) lower than OSP-1.00 mm (521.15 ± 0.99 mg.g-1) due to retention of particles. In both batches, heavy metals such as chromium, nickel and copper had not detected. FB1 and FB2 had the best nutritional content compared to SB, with higher calcium content (mg.g-1) 0.69 ± 0.07; 13.76 ± 0.72 and 19.47 ± 1.99 for SB, FB1 and FB2, respectively. The internal preference map showed better acceptance of FB1 compared to FB2. The penalty test showed that this acceptance was penalized (p < 0.05) due to the sandy texture.Originality/valueThe large number of shells generated in the processing of oysters is an environmental problem and generates waste of a natural source of calcium. It has been demonstrated that oyster shell powder can be used as a natural and sustainable source of calcium in bread, requiring further studies to assess the bioavailability of calcium.

Impact of context in visual evaluation of design pastry: Comparison of real and virtual

Virtual reality is becoming an opportunity for multidisciplinary collaboration, including sensory science. The main objective of this work was to compare visual expectations generated by five real cakes evaluated in a laboratory testing booth with their virtual versions in a virtualized sensory booth. Real cakes were designed following the current pastries trends, and virtualization was made using a photogrammetric process. The virtual sensory booth was designed using Unity3D software. The participants were immersed in the 3D virtual environment through a head-mounted display (HMD). Data were analyzed using ANOVA mixed model, internal preference mapping and cluster analysis. The effects of context (real and virtual), the order in test session (crossover design), and socio-demographic factors were studied. The results showed no statistically significant differences within real and virtual studied cakes. These results create new perspectives of the potential of this methodology to be used to rate virtual foods in an immersive environment at the same level as real foods. Regarding the impact of the socio-demographic factors on the acceptance of the cakes, only the effects of gender and sweet-tooth were statistically significant. Males assessed all variables associated with the cakes significantly higher (p < 0.05) than females. In the same way, all variables in all cakes were better evaluated by participants with a self-declared sweet-tooth (p < 0.05). In the internal preference map, participants were segmented into three clusters that could be identified with the different trends in the pastries market. These results may help companies build tailor-made marketing strategies using Immersive technologies to evaluate new food products to satisfy different consumer segments.

A Market-Based Coordination Mechanism for Resource Planning Under Uncertainty

Multiagent Resource Allocation (MARA) distributes a set of resources among a set of intelligent agents in order to respect the preferences of the agents and to maximize some measure of global utility, which may include minimizing total costs or maximizing total return. We are interested in MARA solutions that provide optimal or close-to-optimal allocation of resources in terms of maximizing a global welfare function with low communication and computation cost, with respect to the priority of agents, and temporal dependencies between resources. We propose an MDP approach for resource planning in multiagent environments. Our approach formulates internal preference modeling and success of each individual agent as a single MDP and then to optimize global utility, we apply a market-based solution to coordinate these decentralized MDPs.

Photograph Based Evaluation of Consumer Expectation on Healthiness, Fullness, and Acceptance of Sandwiches as Convenience Food.

Sandwiches are the most common “casual-food” consumed by all age groups in Spain. Due to the importance of visual appearance to promote unplanned or impulse buying, foodservice and hospitality companies focus on improving the visual impression of their food menus to create an expectation that satisfies both sensory and hedonic consumer experiences. To provide a list of attributes about the visual appearance of sandwiches, 25 students were recruited from a university and were invited to participate in two nominal group technique (NGT) sessions. To understand whether a sandwiches’ appearance can influence the expectation of consumers, 259 participants completed an online survey specially designed from the results of the NGT sessions. Data were analyzed using conjoint, internal preference mapping and cluster analysis; the interaction effect by gender was also studied. The conjoint results indicate that visual perception about the filling (vegetal or pork based) plays the most key role overall in consumer expectation. When consumers choose vegetables as the filling, the consumers’ perceived sandwiches as healthier, but the pork filling was perceived as more attractive and satiating. Interaction effect by gender was observed in filling when females perceived pork filling as less healthy than vegetable. By acceptance, consumers were segmented into three groups. The first cluster (n = 80) selected the pork filling. The smaller group (cluster 3, n = 36) prioritized the vegetal filling, and the most numerous cluster 2 (n = 140) liked sandwiches with multigrain bread. These results may help companies to build tailor-made marketing strategies to satisfy consumer segments.

Camu-camu (Myrciaria dubia) and jambolan (Syzygium cumini) juice blend: sensory analysis and bioactive compounds stability

Abstract In this study, the stability of the bioactive compounds from camu-camu and jambolan mixture was evaluated, and a juice blend formulation based on its sensorial properties was established. The stability of three juice formulations with camu-camu/jambolan/water (w:w:w), 37.5:12.5:50 (JB); 37.5:0:62.5 (CJ) and 0:12.5:87.5 (JJ) was evaluated. Additionally, the bioactive compounds and sensory acceptance were performed in six juice formulations with camu-camu/jambolan: 12.5:37.5 (F1); 17.5:32.5 (F2); 22.5:27.5 (F3); 27.5:22.5 (F4); 32.5:17.5 (F5) and 37.5:12.5 (F6). The stability of the anthocyanins in the JB formulation was ensured for 5 days of storage at 25 °C. First-order reaction kinetics described the degradation of anthocyanins during 10 days of storage. The internal preference map analysis evidenced two groups: one formed by the formulations F1 and F2 and the other by F3, F4, F5 and F6. Sensory analysis showed that the formulation with the lowest concentration of camu-camu (F1) presented the highest sensory acceptance rate (80.4%), high bioactive compounds contents: 23.04 mg anthocyanins.100 mL-1, 353.32 mg ascorbic acid.100 mL-1, 892.06 mg phenolic compounds.100 mL-1, and high antioxidant capacity (3667.78 mM ET.100 mL-1). The results shows that juice blend with camu-camu/jambolan 12.5:37.5 (F1) have a good acceptance and high bioactive compounds content.

Physico-biochemical characterization of mini-tomatoes and internal preference mapping based on consumer acceptance

The choice of promising parents represents a crucial step in developing improved cultivars in breeding programs for mini-tomatoes— highly demanded miniature vegetables. The association of non-sensory and sensory features of fruit greatly enhances the generation of cultivars that meet the expectations of the productive and commercial chain of tomatoes, focusing on diverse market niches. Thus, in this study, five genotypes of mini-tomatoes were characterized based on physical, biochemical, and sensory attributes. The genetic material encompasses four cultivars (BRS Iracema, BRS Zamir, Iraí, and Sweet Heaven) and one landrace (UEL 238). The fruit were characterized by their dimension, color, firmness, soluble solids content, acidity, vitamin C, carotenoids, phenolic compounds, flavonoids, and antioxidant activity. In the sensorial test, 109 participants, including 27 chefs, evaluated the shape, size, color, aroma, flavor, texture, and overall liking of the fruit. The cultivar Sweet Heaven, with an oblong red fruit, brought together the main desirable physical traits, such as greater mass, pericarp thickness, firmness, and soluble solids content; while BRS Zamir presented superior values for biochemical characteristics, such as total phenolic compounds, total flavonoids, and antioxidant activity. Despite the lesser appreciation of the landrace UEL 238, all genotypes were accepted by consumers, especially BRS Iracema (round red fruit), followed by Iraí (oblong yellow fruit). The characterized mini-tomatoes may be explored in breeding programs as promising parents to combine desirable sensory attributes with the highest nutraceutical quality, resulting in superior cultivars that have been increasingly demanded on the market.

Synbiotic açaí juice (Euterpe oleracea) containing sucralose as noncaloric sweetener: Processing optimization, bioactive compounds, and acceptance during storage.

This study aimed to evaluate the fermentation process of Lacticaseibacillus casei in the açaí juice, and to evaluate the addition of fructooligosaccharides and sucrose. The organic acids, anthocyanins, polyphenolic compounds, and antioxidant activity were also investigated during fermentation. Moreover, the impact of sucrose and sucralose on microbial viability and sensory acceptance of synbiotic products was evaluated during 42 days storage at refrigerated conditions. The conditions for synbiotic juice production were the initial pH of 6.1 and fermentation undertaken at 28 °C for 22 hr. During fermentation, the higher viability was obtained when a combination of 40g/L of FOS+10g/L of sucrose was used (9.70± 0.01 log CFU/mL). The lactic acid increased from 0.82 to 1.29g/L during the fermentation while citric acid decreased from 1.05 to 0.75g/L. The cyanidin-3-O-rutinoside, polyphenolic compounds, and antioxidant activity increased. Thus, fermentation improved the functional value of the beverage. The L. casei viability reduced from 9.71± 0.04 to 8.90± 0.06 log CFU/ mL in the juice with sucrose, and from 9.71± 0.04 to 8.71± 0.14 log CFU/ mL in the juice with sucralose. Thus, the açaí juice is a viable matrix for the synbiotic food, which allows the viability maintenance during the storage. Regarding sensory acceptance, the internal preference mapping indicated an increase in the color preference with the storage of synbiotic juices. However, the flavor and overall acceptance reduced with storage. Nevertheless, the flavor and overall acceptance of juice with sucralose were better than the juice with sucrose. After 42 days of storage, penalty analysis revealed that beverage with sucrose showed a lack of sweet taste and excess of sour taste. Thus, a high-quality açaí product with viable probiotic microorganism, high anthocyanins, and polyphenolic compounds contents could be obtained, which can be exploited for commercial use. PRACTICAL APPLICATION: Synbiotic açaí juice is a healthier alternative to consuming products containing this fruit. The inclusion of probiotic microorganisms and prebiotic fructooligosaccharides increased bioactive compounds contents during the shelf life of the juice. The sensory evaluation using the internal preference mapping revealed that the juice flavor with sucralose was better accepted than the juice formulated with addition of sucrose.

Re-Thinking the Role of Government Information Intervention in the COVID-19 Pandemic: An Agent-Based Modeling Analysis.

The COVID-19 pandemic imposes new challenges on the capability of governments in intervening with the information dissemination and reducing the risk of infection outbreak. To reveal the complexity behind government intervention decision, we build a bi-layer network diffusion model for the information-disease dynamics that were intervened in and conduct a full space simulation to illustrate the trade-off faced by governments between information disclosing and blocking. The simulation results show that governments prioritize the accuracy of disclosed information over the disclosing speed when there is a high-level medical recognition of the virus and a high public health awareness, while, for the opposite situation, more strict information blocking is preferred. Furthermore, an unaccountable government tends to delay disclosing, a risk-averse government prefers a total blocking, and a low government credibility will discount the effect of information disclosing and aggravate the situation. These findings suggest that information intervention is indispensable for containing the outbreak of infectious disease, but its effectiveness depends on a complicated way on both external social/epidemic factors and the governments’ internal preferences and governance capability, for which more thorough investigations are needed in the future.