Consumer Motivation for Disease Prevention

Overview

The purpose of this study is to examine (1) how the causal structure of a disease influences people's disease prevention decisions; and (2) how the causal structure of a disease interacts with people's regret anticipation in determining their disease prevention decisions.

People sometimes have to deliberate on whether or not to remove a risk factor that may potentially cause a disease in the future. When a controllable risk factor (say, X) is the only factor that causes a disease, the decision to remove it may simply depend on the probabilistic relationship between X and an outcome, as well as the cost of removing X. However, little is known when other factors that are out of the decision-maker's control are also present. The main question being asked here is how does the presence of such uncontrollable factors change people's decision to remove X. Specifically, the investigators consider two cases: a disease caused by a single controllable risk factor (say X) and a disease caused by two risk factors -- a controllable factor (X) and an uncontrollable factor (Y). In both cases, the removal of X can result in a meaningful reduction in overall disease risk. It is hypothesized that even when the magnitude of overall risk reduction brought by the removal of X is the same in the two cases, people would have a lower motivation to remove X in the latter case. The investigators also examine how the presence of an uncontrollable risk factor interacts with the respondents' regret anticipation to influence their decision to remove X. In the context of the current research, regret anticipation could take one of the following forms: (a) feel regretful if one decides not to remove X and later develops the disease (b) feel regretful if one decides to remove X but still develops the disease. The investigators expect (a) to moderate the effect of uncontrollable risk factor on motivation to remove X.

Conditions

Interventions

Eligibility

Locations (1)

Outcomes

Central Contacts