Adaptive human behavior in epidemiological models

TLDR

Infectious disease science is entering a new stage where public policy increasingly seeks to motivate people to alter contact behavior, yet the cost–benefit trade‑offs that shape such behavior are often only implicitly modeled, making it hard to parse adaptive behavior’s impact on epidemic dynamics. The authors employ an epidemiological–economic model to explicitly model the trade‑offs that drive person‑to‑person contact decisions. The model couples disease dynamics with economic decision theory to capture how individuals balance contact benefits against disease risk. Including adaptive human behavior markedly alters epidemic predictions, affecting parameter estimation, interpretation, and social distancing policy design, and necessitates a shift in how epidemiological processes and parameters are conceptualized.

Abstract

The science and management of infectious disease are entering a new stage. Increasingly public policy to manage epidemics focuses on motivating people, through social distancing policies, to alter their behavior to reduce contacts and reduce public disease risk. Person-to-person contacts drive human disease dynamics. People value such contacts and are willing to accept some disease risk to gain contact-related benefits. The cost–benefit trade-offs that shape contact behavior, and hence the course of epidemics, are often only implicitly incorporated in epidemiological models. This approach creates difficulty in parsing out the effects of adaptive behavior. We use an epidemiological–economic model of disease dynamics to explicitly model the trade-offs that drive person-to-person contact decisions. Results indicate that including adaptive human behavior significantly changes the predicted course of epidemics and that this inclusion has implications for parameter estimation and interpretation and for the development of social distancing policies. Acknowledging adaptive behavior requires a shift in thinking about epidemiological processes and parameters.