IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/hepoli/v95y2010i1p50-56.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Who is that masked person: The use of face masks on Mexico City public transportation during the Influenza A (H1N1) outbreak

Author

Listed:
  • Condon, Bradly John
  • Sinha, Tapen

Abstract

This article examines three issues: (1) the use, over time, of facemasks in a public setting to prevent the spread of a respiratory disease for which the mortality rate is unknown; (2) the difference between the responses of male and female subjects in a public setting to unknown risks; and (3) the effectiveness of mandatory and voluntary public health measures in a public health emergency. The use of facemasks to prevent the spread of respiratory diseases in a public setting is controversial. At the height of the influenza epidemic in Mexico City in the spring of 2009, the federal government of Mexico recommended that passengers on public transport use facemasks to prevent contagion. The Mexico City government made the use of facemasks mandatory for bus and taxi drivers, but enforcement procedures differed for these two categories. Using an evidence-based approach, we collected data on the use of facemasks over a 2-week period. In the specific context of the Mexico City influenza outbreak, these data showed mask usage rates mimicked the course of the epidemic and gender difference in compliance rates among metro passengers. Moreover, there was not a significant difference in compliance with mandatory and voluntary public health measures where the effect of the mandatory measures was diminished by insufficiently severe penalties, the lack of market forces to create compliance incentives and sufficient political influence to diminish enforcement. Voluntary compliance was diminished by lack of trust in the government.

Suggested Citation

  • Condon, Bradly John & Sinha, Tapen, 2010. "Who is that masked person: The use of face masks on Mexico City public transportation during the Influenza A (H1N1) outbreak," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 95(1), pages 50-56, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:hepoli:v:95:y:2010:i:1:p:50-56
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0168-8510(09)00294-2
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Howland, J. & Hingson, R. & Mangione, T.W. & Bell, N. & Bak, S., 1996. "Why are most drowning victims men? Sex differences in aquatic skills and behaviors," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 86(1), pages 93-96.
    2. Tyler, Joanna & Lichtenstein, Carolyn, 1997. "Risk, protective, AOD knowledge, attitude, and AOD behavior. Factors associated with characteristics of high-risk youth," Evaluation and Program Planning, Elsevier, vol. 20(1), pages 27-45, February.
    3. 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.
    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. Kelly R Moran & Sara Y Del Valle, 2016. "A Meta-Analysis of the Association between Gender and Protective Behaviors in Response to Respiratory Epidemics and Pandemics," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 11(10), pages 1-25, October.
    2. Valerio Capraro & Hélène Barcelo, 2020. "The effect of messaging and gender on intentions to wear a face covering to slow down COVID-19 transmission," Journal of Behavioral Economics for Policy, Society for the Advancement of Behavioral Economics (SABE), vol. 4(S2), pages 45-55, December.
    3. Lixin Jiang & Erica L. Bettac & Hyun Jung Lee & Tahira M. Probst, 2022. "In Whom Do We Trust? A Multifoci Person-Centered Perspective on Institutional Trust during COVID-19," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(3), pages 1-20, February.
    4. Jennifer L. Scheid & Shannon P. Lupien & Gregory S. Ford & Sarah L. West, 2020. "Commentary: Physiological and Psychological Impact of Face Mask Usage during the COVID-19 Pandemic," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 17(18), pages 1-12, September.
    5. Alexander Lipton & Marcos Lopez de Prado, 2022. "Mitigation Strategies for COVID-19: Lessons from the K-SEIR Model Calibrated to the Observable Data," JRFM, MDPI, vol. 15(6), pages 1-38, June.
    6. Kaplan, Sigal & Tchetchik, Anat & Greenberg, Doron & Sapir, Itsik, 2022. "Transit use reduction following COVID-19: The effect of threat appraisal, proactive coping and institutional trust," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 159(C), pages 338-356.
    7. Muhammad Irfan & Nadeem Akhtar & Munir Ahmad & Farrukh Shahzad & Rajvikram Madurai Elavarasan & Haitao Wu & Chuxiao Yang, 2021. "Assessing Public Willingness to Wear Face Masks during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Fresh Insights from the Theory of Planned Behavior," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(9), pages 1-22, April.
    8. Rachael M. Jones & Elodie Adida, 2013. "Selecting Nonpharmaceutical Interventions for Influenza," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 33(8), pages 1473-1488, August.
    9. David Gershon & Alexander Lipton & Hagai Levine, 2020. "Managing COVID-19 Pandemic without Destructing the Economy," Papers 2004.10324, arXiv.org, revised May 2020.
    10. Arielle Kaim & Eli Jaffe & Maya Siman-Tov & Ella Khairish & Bruria Adini, 2020. "Impact of a Brief Educational Intervention on Knowledge, Perceived Knowledge, Perceived Safety, and Resilience of the Public During COVID-19 Crisis," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 17(16), pages 1-14, August.

    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. Becchetti, Leonardo & Degli Antoni, Giacomo & Ottone, Stefania & Solferino, Nazaria, 2013. "Allocation criteria under task performance: The gendered preference for protection," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 45(C), pages 96-111.
    2. Girardone, Claudia & Kokas, Sotirios & Wood, Geoffrey, 2021. "Diversity and women in finance: Challenges and future perspectives," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 71(C).
    3. Monica Violeta Achim & Viorela-Ligia Văidean & Andrada-Ioana Sabău Popa & Lavinia-Ioana Safta, 2022. "The impact of corporate governance on the digitalization process: empirical evidence for the Romanian companies," Digital Finance, Springer, vol. 4(4), pages 313-340, December.
    4. Shusen Qi & Steven Ongena & Hua Cheng, 2022. "Working with women, do men get all the credit?," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 59(4), pages 1427-1447, December.
    5. Tha�s Garc�a-Pereiro & Ivano Dileo, 2017. "Gender Differences In Entrepreneurial Activities In Italy," RIEDS - Rivista Italiana di Economia, Demografia e Statistica - The Italian Journal of Economic, Demographic and Statistical Studies, SIEDS Societa' Italiana di Economia Demografia e Statistica, vol. 71(3), pages 31-40, July-Sept.
    6. Ahsan Habib & Mabel D' Costa & Hedy Jiaying Huang & Md. Borhan Uddin Bhuiyan & Li Sun, 2020. "Determinants and consequences of financial distress: review of the empirical literature," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 60(S1), pages 1023-1075, April.
    7. Kirsten Burkhardt & Pascal Nguyen & Evelyne Poincelot, 2020. "Agents of change: Women in top management and corporate environmental performance," Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 27(4), pages 1591-1604, July.
    8. Marc A. Ragin & Benjamin L. Collier & Johannes G. Jaspersen, 2021. "The effect of information disclosure on demand for high‐load insurance," Journal of Risk & Insurance, The American Risk and Insurance Association, vol. 88(1), pages 161-193, March.
    9. Balafoutas, Loukas & Sutter, Matthias, 2019. "How uncertainty and ambiguity in tournaments affect gender differences in competitive behavior," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 118(C), pages 1-13.
    10. Chan, Chien Sheng Richard & Park, Haemin Dennis, 2013. "The influence of dispositional affect and cognition on venture investment portfolio concentration," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 28(3), pages 397-412.
    11. Verheul, Ingrid & Thurik, Roy & Grilo, Isabel & van der Zwan, Peter, 2012. "Explaining preferences and actual involvement in self-employment: Gender and the entrepreneurial personality," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 33(2), pages 325-341.
    12. Aminah Nalikka, 2009. "Impact of Gender Diversity on Voluntary Disclosure in Annual Reports," Accounting & Taxation, The Institute for Business and Finance Research, vol. 1(1), pages 101-113.
    13. Hoang, Tuyen Thanh & Nguyen, Cuong Viet & Van Tran, Hoa Thi, 2019. "Are female CEOs more risk averse than male counterparts? Evidence from Vietnam," Economic Analysis and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 63(C), pages 57-74.
    14. C. Leigh ANDERSON & Mary Kay GUGERTY, 2009. "Intertemporal Choice And Development Policy: New Evidence On Time‐Varying Discount Rates From Vietnam And Russia," The Developing Economies, Institute of Developing Economies, vol. 47(2), pages 123-146, June.
    15. 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.
    16. Andrea Lippi & Laura Barbieri & Mariacristina Piva & Werner De Bondt, 2018. "Time-varying risk behavior and prior investment outcomes: Evidence from Italy," Judgment and Decision Making, Society for Judgment and Decision Making, vol. 13(5), pages 471-483, September.
    17. E. N. Bridwell-Mitchell & Theresa K. Lant, 2014. "Be Careful What You Wish For: The Effects of Issue Interpretation on Social Choices in Professional Networks," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 25(2), pages 401-419, April.
    18. J. François Outreville, 2015. "The Relationship Between Relative Risk Aversion And The Level Of Education: A Survey And Implications For The Demand For Life Insurance," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(1), pages 97-111, February.
    19. Samuel Shye & Ido Haber, 2020. "Risk as Challenge: A Dual System Stochastic Model for Binary Choice Behavior," Applied Economics and Finance, Redfame publishing, vol. 7(2), pages 33-50, March.
    20. Diacon, Stephen & Hasseldine, John, 2007. "Framing effects and risk perception: The effect of prior performance presentation format on investment fund choice," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 28(1), pages 31-52, January.

    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:eee:hepoli:v:95:y:2010:i:1:p:50-56. 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: Catherine Liu or the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/healthpol .

    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.