Incorporating Authority Perception, Economic Status, and Behavioral Response in Infectious Disease Control

Abstract

We introduce a multi-population mean field game framework to examine how economic status and authority perception shape vaccination and social distancing decisions under different epidemic control policies. We carried out a survey to inform our model and stratify the population into six groups based on income and perception of authority, capturing behavioral heterogeneity. Individuals adjust their socialization and vaccination levels to optimize objectives such as minimizing treatment costs, complying with social-distancing guidelines if they are authority-followers, or reducing losses from decreased social interactions if they are authority-indifferents, alongside economic costs. Public health authorities influence behavior through social-distancing guidelines and vaccination costs. We characterize the Nash equilibrium via a forward-backward differential equation system, provide its mathematical analysis, and develop a numerical algorithm to solve it. Our findings reveal a trade-off between social-distancing and vaccination decisions. Under stricter guidelines that target both susceptible and infected individuals, followers reduce both socialization and vaccination levels, while indifferents increase socialization due to followers' preventative measures. Adaptive guidelines targeting infected individuals effectively reduce infections and narrow the gap between low- and high-income groups, even when susceptible individuals socialize more and vaccinate less. Lower vaccination costs incentivize vaccination among low-income groups, but their impact on disease spread is smaller than when they are coupled with social-distancing guidelines. Trust-building emerges as a critical factor in epidemic mitigation, underscoring the importance of data-informed, game-theoretical models that aim to understand complex human responses to mitigation policies.