We present evidence from choice experiments on hypothetical triage decisions in a pandemic. Respondents have to decide who out of two patients gets ventilation. Patients are described in terms of attributes such as short-term survival chance, long-term life expectancy, and their current ventilation status. Attributes are derived from the ethical discourse among experts regarding triage guidelines during the COVID-19 pandemic and differ in the extent to which they are salient from a utilitarian or deontological perspective. Empirically, we find that although nonexperts agree with experts in prioritizing utilitarian attributes in triage decisions, nonexperts also consider the adherence to the norm of wearing face masks as particularly relevant. Furthermore, our study supports Greene and colleagues’ dual-process model of moral judgment; we find that utilitarian attributes are more decisive for respondents with a greater inclination toward utilitarianism and for respondents with a greater tendency toward reflection.

我们提供了关于大流行病中假设性分类决策的选择实验的证据。受访者必须决定两名患者中谁获得通气。患者根据短期生存机会、长期预期寿命和他们当前的通气状态等属性进行描述。属性源自专家之间关于 COVID-19 大流行期间分诊指南的伦理讨论，并且从功利主义或道义论的角度来看，它们的显着程度不同。根据经验，我们发现尽管非专家同意专家在分诊决策中优先考虑功利属性，但非专家也认为遵守戴口罩的规范特别相关。此外，我们的研究支持格林及其同事的道德判断双过程模型；