风险感知、网络搜索与消费扭曲

Risk Perception,Online Search and Consumption Distortion

基于我国城镇住户月度面板数据和百度指数数据库,本文以地震为例,首次考察了风险感知如何影响家户消费行为和相关机制。结果表明,地震搜索指数每上升1个标准差,当地当月人均消费支出下降25元,且信息传播是导致搜索上升和消费下降的主要原因。灾难性事件通过改变居民主观风险造成消费扭曲,且影响甚至可能超过了直接经济损失。本文定量估算了对灾难性事件的风险感知造成的经济损失,能为政策制定者提供决策参考。

Using earthquake as an example,we investigate how risk perception affects household consumption with China Urban Household Survey data and Baidu index dataset.The empirical results show that consumption expenditure per capita drops by 25.2 yuan as the local search index of“earthquake”keyword increases by one standard error unit.Our findings generally support the precautionary savings hypothesis.We also find media coverage of earthquake-related information drives the rise of the search index and the fall of household consumption.The results suggest that disaster events can seriously distort household consumption behaviors,and the economic costs of social panic can be even higher than the direct loss of disasters.