[go: up one dir, main page]
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ebl/ecbull/eb-20-00882.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Who wears a mask? Gender differences in risk behaviors in the COVID-19 early days in Taiwan

Author

Listed:
  • Yating Chuang

    (National Taipei University)

  • John Chung-En Liu

    (National Taiwan University)

Abstract
We evaluate mask-wearing behaviors in response to COVID-19 based on 12,208 observations in February 2020 in Taiwan. We find that, compared to men, women are 16 percent more likely to wear masks as a way to protect themselves during the pandemic. The protective behaviors, however, decrease significantly when people are with others. This gender difference in mask-wearing has dropped the most when people are with a mixed-gender group. Our results call for attention to gender differences and peer dynamics when discussing health protection behaviors in the COVID-19 crisis.

Suggested Citation

  • Yating Chuang & John Chung-En Liu, 2020. "Who wears a mask? Gender differences in risk behaviors in the COVID-19 early days in Taiwan," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 40(4), pages 2619-2627.
    • Handle: RePEc:ebl:ecbull:eb-20-00882
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.accessecon.com/Pubs/EB/2020/Volume40/EB-20-V40-I4-P227.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Filippin, Antonio & Crosetto, Paolo, 2014. "A Reconsideration of Gender Differences in Risk Attitudes," IZA Discussion Papers 8184, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    2. Catherine C. Eckel & Philip J. Grossman, 2002. "Sex Differences and Statistical Stereotyping in Attitudes Toward Financial Risk," Monash Economics Working Papers archive-03, Monash University, Department of Economics.
    3. Booth, Alison & Nolen, Patrick, 2012. "Choosing to compete: How different are girls and boys?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 81(2), pages 542-555.
    4. Mitze, Timo & Kosfeld, Reinhold & Rode, Johannes & Wälde, Klaus, 2020. "Face masks considerably reduce COVID-19 cases in Germany," Publications of Darmstadt Technical University, Institute for Business Studies (BWL) 124130, Darmstadt Technical University, Department of Business Administration, Economics and Law, Institute for Business Studies (BWL).
    5. Andreas Friedl & Patrick Ring & Ulrich Schmidt, 2017. "Gender differences in ambiguity aversion under different outcome correlation structures," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 82(2), pages 211-219, February.
    6. Boschini, Anne & Dreber, Anna & von Essen, Emma & Muren, Astri & Ranehill, Eva, 2019. "Gender, risk preferences and willingness to compete in a random sample of the Swedish population✰," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 83(C).
    7. Mitze, Timo & Kosfeld, Reinhold & Rode, Johannes & Wälde, Klaus, 2020. "Face masks considerably reduce COVID-19 cases in Germany," Publications of Darmstadt Technical University, Institute for Business Studies (BWL) 124587, Darmstadt Technical University, Department of Business Administration, Economics and Law, Institute for Business Studies (BWL).
    8. Mitze, Timo & Kosfeld, Reinhold & Rode, Johannes & Wälde, Klaus, 2020. "Face Masks Considerably Reduce COVID-19 Cases in Germany: A Synthetic Control Method Approach," IZA Discussion Papers 13319, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    9. Thomas Dohmen & Armin Falk & David Huffman & Uwe Sunde & Jürgen Schupp & Gert G. Wagner, 2011. "Individual Risk Attitudes: Measurement, Determinants, And Behavioral Consequences," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 9(3), pages 522-550, June.
    10. Bennett, Daniel & Chiang, Chun-Fang & Malani, Anup, 2015. "Learning during a crisis: The SARS epidemic in Taiwan," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 112(C), pages 1-18.
    11. Booth, Alison & Cardona-Sosa, Lina & Nolen, Patrick, 2014. "Gender differences in risk aversion: Do single-sex environments affect their development?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 99(C), pages 126-154.
    12. John M. Barrios & Yael Hochberg, 2020. "Risk Perception Through the Lens of Politics in the Time of the COVID-19 Pandemic," NBER Working Papers 27008, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    13. Cárdenas, Juan-Camilo & Dreber, Anna & von Essen, Emma & Ranehill, Eva, 2012. "Gender differences in competitiveness and risk taking: Comparing children in Colombia and Sweden," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 83(1), pages 11-23.
    14. Powell, Melanie & Ansic, David, 1997. "Gender differences in risk behaviour in financial decision-making: An experimental analysis," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 18(6), pages 605-628, November.
    15. Levon Barseghyan & Jeffrey Prince & Joshua C. Teitelbaum, 2011. "Are Risk Preferences Stable across Contexts? Evidence from Insurance Data," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(2), pages 591-631, April.
    16. Antonio Filippin, 2022. "Gender differences in risk attitudes," IZA World of Labor, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA), pages 100-100, October.
    17. Julie A. Nelson, 2015. "Are Women Really More Risk-Averse Than Men? A Re-Analysis Of The Literature Using Expanded Methods," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(3), pages 566-585, July.
    18. Drupp, Moritz A. & Khadjavi, Menusch & Riekhof, Marie-Catherine & Voss, Rudi, 2020. "Professional identity and the gender gap in risk-taking. Evidence from field experiments with scientists," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 170(C), pages 418-432.
    19. Lundborg, Petter & Andersson, Henrik, 2008. "Gender, risk perceptions, and smoking behavior," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 27(5), pages 1299-1311, September.
    20. Rachel Croson & Uri Gneezy, 2009. "Gender Differences in Preferences," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 47(2), pages 448-474, June.
    21. Charness, Gary & Gneezy, Uri, 2012. "Strong Evidence for Gender Differences in Risk Taking," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 83(1), pages 50-58.
    22. Liran Einav & Amy Finkelstein & Iuliana Pascu & Mark R. Cullen, 2012. "How General Are Risk Preferences? Choices under Uncertainty in Different Domains," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 102(6), pages 2606-2638, October.
    23. Ying Fan & A. Yeşim Orhun & Dana Turjeman, 2020. "Heterogeneous Actions, Beliefs, Constraints and Risk Tolerance During the COVID-19 Pandemic," NBER Working Papers 27211, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    24. Lex Borghans & Bart H. H. Golsteyn & James J. Heckman & Huub Meijers, 2009. "Gender Differences in Risk Aversion and Ambiguity Aversion," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 7(2-3), pages 649-658, 04-05.
    25. Galizzi Matteo M. & Miraldo Marisa, 2017. "Are You What You Eat? Healthy Behaviour and Risk Preferences," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 17(1), pages 1-25, February.
    26. Galizzi Matteo M. & Miraldo Marisa, 2017. "Are You What You Eat? Healthy Behaviour and Risk Preferences," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 17(1), pages 1-25, January.
    27. Lamiraud, Karine & Vranceanu, Radu, 2018. "Group gender composition and economic decision-making: Evidence from the Kallystée business game," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 145(C), pages 294-305.
    28. Almenberg, Johan & Dreber, Anna, 2015. "Gender, stock market participation and financial literacy," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 137(C), pages 140-142.
    29. Eckel, Catherine C. & Grossman, Philip J., 2008. "Men, Women and Risk Aversion: Experimental Evidence," Handbook of Experimental Economics Results, in: Charles R. Plott & Vernon L. Smith (ed.), Handbook of Experimental Economics Results, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 113, pages 1061-1073, Elsevier.
    30. Anderson, Lisa R. & Mellor, Jennifer M., 2008. "Predicting health behaviors with an experimental measure of risk preference," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 27(5), pages 1260-1274, September.
    31. Stephen G. Dimmock & Roy Kouwenberg & Peter P. Wakker, 2016. "Ambiguity Attitudes in a Large Representative Sample," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 62(5), pages 1363-1380, May.
    32. Banerjee, Debosree, 2014. "Ethnicity and Gender Differences in Risk, Ambiguity Attitude," GlobalFood Discussion Papers 180978, Georg-August-Universitaet Goettingen, GlobalFood, Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Development.
    33. Hannah Schildberg-Hörisch, 2018. "Are Risk Preferences Stable?," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 32(2), pages 135-154, Spring.
    34. Shelby Gerking & Raman Khaddaria, 2012. "Perceptions Of Health Risk And Smoking Decisions Of Young People," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 21(7), pages 865-877, July.
    35. Kalle Hirvonen, 2020. "This is US: Geography of evidence in top health economics journals," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 29(10), pages 1316-1323, October.
    36. Ken Binmore & Lisa Stewart & Alex Voorhoeve, 2012. "How much ambiguity aversion?," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 45(3), pages 215-238, December.
    37. Gerking, S.D. & Khaddaria, R., 2012. "Perceptions of health risk and smoking decisions of young people," Other publications TiSEM 2e129465-1e69-4454-83d7-7, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    38. Lex Borghans & Bart H.H. Golsteyn & James J. Heckman & Huub Meijers, 2009. "Gender Differences in Risk Aversion and Ambiguity," Working Papers 200903, Geary Institute, University College Dublin.
    39. Antonio Filippin & Paolo Crosetto, 2016. "A Reconsideration of Gender Differences in Risk Attitudes," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 62(11), pages 3138-3160, November.
    40. Alan, Sule & Baydar, Nazli & Boneva, Teodora & Crossley, Thomas F. & Ertac, Seda, 2017. "Transmission of risk preferences from mothers to daughters," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 134(C), pages 60-77.
    41. Chuang, Yating & Schechter, Laura, 2015. "Stability of experimental and survey measures of risk, time, and social preferences: A review and some new results," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 117(C), pages 151-170.
    42. Gong, Binglin & Yang, Chun-Lei, 2012. "Gender differences in risk attitudes: Field experiments on the matrilineal Mosuo and the patriarchal Yi," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 83(1), pages 59-65.
    43. repec:cup:judgdm:v:9:y:2014:i:2:p:159-166 is not listed on IDEAS
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Ahmed Al-Rawi & Maliha Siddiqi & Clare Wenham & Julia Smith, 2022. "The gendered dimensions of the anti-mask and anti-lockdown movement on social media," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 9(1), pages 1-10, December.
    2. Borau, Sylvie & Couprie, Hélène & Hopfensitz, Astrid, 2022. "The prosociality of married people: Evidence from a large multinational sample," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 92(C).
    3. Grace O. Onodipe & Amanda L. Wilsker & Mark A. Partridge, 2022. "Economic knowledge, political views, and Covid-19 related behaviors," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 42(2), pages 895-906.
    4. Despina Gavresi & Anastasia Litina & George Mavropoulos & Sofia Tsitou, 2024. "The Role of Gender and Family Norms on the COVID-19 Spread in Europe," Discussion Paper Series 2024_06, Department of Economics, University of Macedonia, revised Jun 2024.
    5. Natalia Maja Józefacka & Robert Podstawski & Małgorzata Barbara Płoszaj & Elżbieta Szpakiewicz & Mateusz Franciszek Kołek & Andrzej Pomianowski & Gabriela Kania & Anna Niedźwiecka & Dominika Łabno & A, 2022. "Masquerade of Polish Society—Psychological Determinants of COVID-19 Precautionary Behaviors," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 20(1), pages 1-12, December.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Horn, Dániel & Kiss, Hubert János & Lénárd, Tünde, 2022. "Gender differences in preferences of adolescents: Evidence from a large-scale classroom experiment," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 194(C), pages 478-522.
    2. Boschini, Anne & Dreber, Anna & von Essen, Emma & Muren, Astri & Ranehill, Eva, 2019. "Gender, risk preferences and willingness to compete in a random sample of the Swedish population✰," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 83(C).
    3. Andreoni, James & Di Girolamo, Amalia & List, John A. & Mackevicius, Claire & Samek, Anya, 2020. "Risk preferences of children and adolescents in relation to gender, cognitive skills, soft skills, and executive functions," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 179(C), pages 729-742.
    4. Edin, Per-Anders & Selin, Håkan, 2022. "Financial Risk-Taking and the Gender Wage Gap," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 75(C).
    5. Schmidt, Ulrich & Friedl, Andreas & Eichenseer, Michael & Lima de Miranda, Katharina, 2021. "Social comparison and gender differences in financial risk taking," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 192(C), pages 58-72.
    6. Friedl, Andreas & Pondorfer, Andreas & Schmidt, Ulrich, 2020. "Gender differences in social risk taking," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 77(C).
    7. Anwesha Bandyopadhyay & Lutfunnahar Begum & Philip J. Grossman, 2021. "Gender differences in the stability of risk attitudes," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 63(2), pages 169-201, October.
    8. Muriel Niederle, 2014. "Gender," NBER Working Papers 20788, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. Cornelia Chadi & Uwe Jirjahn, 2019. "Does Society Influence the Gender Gap in Risk Attitudes? Evidence from East and West Germany," Research Papers in Economics 2019-01, University of Trier, Department of Economics.
    10. Dasgupta, Utteeyo & Mani, Subha & Sharma, Smriti & Singhal, Saurabh, 2016. "Eliciting Risk Preferences: Firefighting in the Field," IZA Discussion Papers 9765, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    11. Zexuan Wang & Ismaël Rafaï & Marc Willinger, 2023. "Does age affect the relation between risk and time preferences? Evidence from a representative sample," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 90(2), pages 341-368, October.
    12. Eva Ranehill & Roberto A. Weber, 2022. "Gender preference gaps and voting for redistribution," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 25(3), pages 845-875, June.
    13. Timo Heinrich & Jason Shachat, 2020. "The development of risk aversion and prudence in Chinese children and adolescents," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 61(3), pages 263-287, December.
    14. Antonín PavlÃ­Ä ek & Aneta BobeniÄ HintoÅ¡ová & FrantiÅ¡ek Sudzina, 2021. "Impact of Personality Traits and Demographic Factors on Risk Attitude," SAGE Open, , vol. 11(4), pages 21582440211, December.
    15. Dasgupta, Utteeyo & Mani, Subha & Sharma, Smriti & Singhal, Saurabh, 2016. "Eliciting Risk Preferences: Firefighting in the Field," IZA Discussion Papers 9765, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    16. Milner, Mattie & Rice, Stephen & Rice, Connor, 2019. "Support for environmentally-friendly airports influenced by political affiliation and social identity," Technology in Society, Elsevier, vol. 59(C).
    17. Khor, Ling Yee & Sariyev, Orkhan & Loos, Tim, 2020. "Gender differences in risk behavior and the link to household effects and individual wealth," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 80(C).
    18. Crosetto, P. & Filippin, A., 2017. "Safe options induce gender differences in risk attitudes," Working Papers 2017-05, Grenoble Applied Economics Laboratory (GAEL).
    19. Drupp, Moritz A. & Khadjavi, Menusch & Riekhof, Marie-Catherine & Voss, Rudi, 2020. "Professional identity and the gender gap in risk-taking. Evidence from field experiments with scientists," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 170(C), pages 418-432.
    20. Markowsky, Eva & Beblo, Miriam, 2022. "When do we observe a gender gap in competition entry? A meta-analysis of the experimental literature," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 198(C), pages 139-163.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Risk Preference; Risk Behavior; Face Masks; Gender; Peer Effects; Taiwan; COVID-19;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I1 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health
    • C9 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ebl:ecbull:eb-20-00882. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: John P. Conley (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.