Planning horizon affects prophylactic decision-making and epidemic dynamics

Luis G. Nardin; Craig R. Miller; Benjamin J. Ridenhour; Stephen M. Krone; Paul Joyce; Bert O. Baumgaertner

2). Figure 7A shows the proportion of infectious agents above which the prophylactic behavior 328 is more advantageous than non-prophylactic behavior assuming agents know the real disease 329 prevalence (κ = 1). By distorting the perceived disease prevalence to increase the risk 330 perception of being infected (κ = 1.5), the real proportion of infectious agents necessary for 331 agents to engage in prophylactic behavior is reduced as shown in Fig. 7B . Hence, the distortion 332 on disease prevalence makes agents engage in prophylactic behavior even when the chance of 333 being infected is low. This affects the epidemic dynamics by reducing the peak size but Proportion of infectious agents above which the prophylactic behavior is more advantageous than the non-prophylactic behavior considering the percentage of protection obtained for adopting the prophylactic behavior (1 − ρ) × 100 and the planning horizon H. (A) No perception distortion, thus κ = 1; while (B) Distortion factor κ of 1.5, which reduces the proportion of infectious agents above which the prophylactic behavior is more advantageous. (C) Epidemic dynamics for different distortion factors that shows how increasing κ reduces the peak size and prolongs the epidemic. 335