RAPID: Behavioral response toward mosquito-vectored disease risk: A normative-perceptual analysis contrasting West Nile virus and Zika across socioeconomic and ethnic populations.

Colorado State University, Fort Collins CO

Investigators

Abstract

Within the last decade four mosquito-borne diseases have become introduced into the United States: West Nile virus, Dengue, Chikungunya, and Zika. This presents a dynamic emerging problem: some areas of the United States are becoming affected by multiple mosquito-borne diseases. It is therefore critical to improve scientific understanding of how individuals and communities interpret these risks and protect themselves. Individual awareness and practice of self-protective measures are critical aspects of any successful effort to address mosquito-borne disease. Toward that end, this study's investigators pursue three primary goals. First, they apply several leading theoretical models to examine how individuals make decisions to use protective behaviors against mosquito exposure. Second, they study the contrast between a well-established disease (West Nile) and a new emerging threat (Zika). Third, they examine these risk-based decision processes in two contrasting populations based on ethnicity and socioeconomic conditions. The benefits of this study are three-fold. First, our fundamental scientific understanding of risk-based behavioral decision making will be improved as several theoretical models will be tested. Second, this study will collect data on public perception of Zika at a critical moment in the introduction of this disease to the U.S. Very little is known on this topic, and this study will be among the first to undertake such an investigation. Third, specific attention will be given to risk-based behavioral response to this threat as may be influenced buy socioeconomic conditions and ethnicity. Detailed insight into these factors can then be used to improved tailored risk communications to improve self-protective behaviors. The goals of this study are to model individual response to risk for mosquito-borne diseases, and compare such models between nearby areas contrasting different socioeconomic and ethic communications as well as the contrast between concern over West Nile virus versus Zika. The area in which the study will be conducted in Houston, Texas is inhabited by both of the problematic mosquito species. The social survey assesses the predictors of mosquito self-protective behavior in two population samples, one from an upper-income Anglo-dominant area, and one from a lower-income Hispanic/Latino-dominant area. The demographics in Houston, Texas, provide optimal study areas that reside in identical ecologies with respect to mosquitos, but present significantly different socio-economic circumstances. Approximately 400 individuals will complete the survey whose questions winclude an inventory of self-protective behaviors, social normative concepts, health perception variables such as perceived barriers to action, perceived benefits to action, cues to action, and cognitive-affective risk perception. The analysis examines the manner in which these influences over self-protective behavior for mosquito exposure may be similar or different across contrasting socioeconomic and ethic groups as well as between West Nile virus and Zika. Theoretical insight generated by this study inform future work in which a dual-process model of risk perception is more effectively applied to health behavior situations. Also, the nesting of a dual-process perspective on risk within a social-normative framework brings additional theoretical insight into this complex constellation of factors affecting social response to risk hazards. The transformative potential of the project resides in the application of these ideas to a unique and rapidly evolving hazard facing the United States. The broader impacts of this work reside in the potential to inform critical aspects of public health risk communication for West Nile virus, Zika, and other mosquito-born diseases. Observing the contrast between an established disease with a relatively modest health burden (West Nile virus) and Zika with its potentially devastating health burden on pregnant women and unborn babies has the potential to provide unique and actionable information to support the optimal formulation of public health communication directed at promoting self-protective behavior. Further, insight into the differential response across a dominant cultural/ethnic contrast provides actionable guidance for effective message tailoring.