title: Toxics, Toyotas, and terrorism: the behavioral economics of fear and stigma.
abstract: Economists have traditionally viewed the behavioral response to risk as continuous and proportional. In contrast, psychologists have often contended that people have little control over their response to risk that is dichotomous, nonproportional, visceral, and fear based. In extreme cases, this automatic response results in the stigmatization of a product, technology, or choice, which seemingly cannot be eliminated or reduced. In resolving these contrasting perspectives, we review four recent studies that blend behavioral economics and psychology. Together, they provide evidence for a dual-process decision model for risk that incorporates both reason and fear. They show consumers' responses to perceived risk as a mix of proportional and dichotomous (safe/unsafe) responses that are relatively more continuous in situations where deliberation is possible, and more dichotomous in emotional or stressful circumstances. These findings reconcile mixed results in past studies, and, more importantly, the dual-process model allows a clear definition of stigma, and suggests new ways to mitigate stigma and to help manage potentially damaging overreactions to it.
authors.affiliation: Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management, Cornell University, NY, USA. wds3@cornell.edu
authors.forename: William
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Schulze
authors.forename: Brian
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Wansink
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001151:Arsenic / Q000633:toxicity; D001336:Automobiles; D002417:Cattle; D003058:Cockroaches; D003661:Decision Support Techniques; D004644:Emotions; D016643:Encephalopathy, Bovine Spongiform / Q000635:transmission; D005239:Fear; D005506:Food Contamination; D006801:Humans; D008892:Milk / Q000633:toxicity; D010465:Perception; D012306:Risk; D012309:Risk-Taking; D057545:Social Stigma; D023481:Terrorism / Q000191:economics* / Q000523:psychology*; D014876:Water Pollution / Q000009:adverse effects
chemical_list: D001151:Arsenic