Exponential Growth Bias and Knowledge-Intention Gap: Numeracy and Affect during the COVID-19 Pandemic

This paper investigates the impact of numeracy interventions to pandemic preventative behaviour, with a focus on reducing the exponential growth bias (EGB; i.e., underestimation of exponential growth). In a pre-registered online experiment, I test the impacts of numeracy interventions aiming to reduce EGB. Apart from eliciting cognitive changes and behaviour intentions during the experiment, I also measure people’s self-reported real-life behaviour one week after. As expected, the numeracy intervention led to cognitive improvements. Paradoxically, the treatments did not improve behaviour - neither intended nor actual. This study shows that the gap between knowledge and behaviour, in the context of COVID-19 pandemic, consists of two components: knowledge-intention gap and intention-behaviour gap. It is important to be aware that “cognitively” communicating public risks, e.g. by providing statistical information, is not enough to nudge behavioural improvement regarding COVID-19. Information about the infection risk will be more effective if provided in ways that arouse relevant emotions - a well-known finding from other domains such as donations for identifiable victims.