Consumer’s understanding of health risks is a key determinant of effective risk communication about health care options. Individuals make decisions about their health under uncertainty, yet the influence of risk perception, risk preferences and information processing has not been well researched in the health economics literature. Here, a novel extension of the standard discrete choice experiment framework is developed to investigate the effect of a “risk shock” (the difference between an individual’s perceived risk and updated information) on consumption and health care decisions. In the experiment, consumers were asked to evaluate a basket of health service and lifestyle choices to lower cardiovascular risk. While most individuals, on average, aim to lower their CVD risk to a level of 1.37% points below the updated information provided, the response was asymmetrical, whereby the response to a “negative shock” was less than a “positive shock”. Furthermore, we find evidence that risk perception, rather than risk preferences, are more likely to affect consumer health and behaviour changes. Given the global pandemic of CVD, these findings suggest there are public health gains to be made from personalised risk communication if it is better tailored to account for individuals’ preferences and risk perception.

消费者对健康风险的理解是有关医疗保健选择的有效风险沟通的关键决定因素。个人在不确定的情况下就自己的健康做出决定，但风险感知、风险偏好和信息处理的影响尚未在健康经济学文献中得到很好的研究。在这里，标准离散选择实验框架的新扩展被开发来研究“风险冲击”（个人感知风险与更新信息之间的差异）对消费和医疗保健决策的影响。在实验中，消费者被要求评估一篮子健康服务和生活方式选择，以降低心血管风险。虽然大多数人的平均目标是将他们的 CVD 风险降低到比提供的更新信息低 1.37% 的水平，反应是不对称的，即对“负面冲击”的反应小于“正面冲击”。此外，我们发现有证据表明，风险感知而非风险偏好更有可能影响消费者的健康和行为变化。鉴于 CVD 的全球大流行，这些研究结果表明，如果个性化风险沟通能够更好地适应个人偏好和风险感知，则可以从公共健康中获益。