Will a major shock awaken the US citizens to the threat of catastrophic pandemic risk? Using a natural experiment administered both before and after the 2014 West African Ebola Outbreak, our evidence suggests “no.” Our results show that prior to the Ebola scare, the US citizens were relatively complacent and placed a low relative priority on public spending to prepare for a pandemic disease outbreak relative to an environmental disaster risk (e.g., Fukushima) or a terrorist attack (e.g., 9/11). After the Ebola scare, the average citizen did not over-react to the risk. This flat reaction was unexpected given the well-known availability heuristic—people tend to over-weigh judgments of events more heavily toward more recent information. In contrast, the average citizen continued to value pandemic risk less relative to terrorism or environmental risk.

中文翻译：

---

灾难性风险：意识到大流行的现实吗？

重大冲击是否会唤醒美国公民以应对灾难性大流行风险的威胁？使用2014年西非埃博拉疫情爆发前后进行的自然实验，我们的证据表明“不”。我们的结果表明，在埃博拉疫情爆发之前，美国公民相对自满，并相对于环境灾难风险（例如福岛）或恐怖袭击（例如， 9/11）。埃博拉病毒恐慌过后，普通公民并未对这种风险反应过度。鉴于众所周知的可用性启发法，这种平坦的反应是出乎意料的-人们倾向于对事件的判断更加偏重于最新的信息。相反，相对于恐怖主义或环境风险，普通公民继续认为大流行风险的价值较低。