Complex dynamics induced by delayed adaptive behavior during epidemics

Ronan F. Arthur; James H. Jones; Matthew H. Bonds; Marcus W. Feldman

In our model, the existence of complex dynamic regimes require a time delay. If behavior change arises from fear and fear is triggered by high local mortality, such delays seem plausible since death is a lagging epidemiological indicator. Lags mean that people can respond sluggishly to an unfolding epidemic crisis, but they also mean that people can abandon protective behaviors prematurely. Developing approaches to incentivize protective behavior throughout the duration of any lag introduced by the natural history of the infection (or otherwise) should be a priority in applied research. This paper represents a first step in understanding endogenous behavior change and time-lagged protective, and we anticipate further developments along these lines. Important future questions include: How and in what context do these phenomena occur empirically? What is the relative influence of insti-. CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license author/funder. It is made available under a The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not peer-reviewed) is the . https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.04.14.028407 doi: bioRxiv preprint 6 Appendices