Investigating expert and lay judgments of pathogen transmission risk in urban and architectural environments

ABSTRACT

The threat of infection posed by the COVID-19 virus forced the general public to use the visible cues within urban and architectural environments as a ‘lens’ through which pathogen transmission risk could be inferred. This study presents a model that quantifies associations between (1) the visible cues of urban and architectural environments and lay ratings of pathogen transmission risk, (2) the same relationship for experts (i.e. Infection Control Practitioners), and (3) the association between the lay ratings and the expert ratings. A series of urban and architectural environments were rated on twenty visible architectural cues and for their perceived pathogen transmission risk by lay and expert raters. Correlational analyses between the two groups yielded considerable consensus between risk ratings, as well as between which cues were significantly associated with risk ratings, which included the space’s crowdedness, the potential for crowds, and cleanliness. Expert risk ratings were also significantly associated with corridor size, and marginally significantly associated with the number of touchable surfaces, the number of furniture/seating, and access to fresh air. In this way, expert cue utilization is more complex than lay assessments. Implications for public health policy makers and designers of the built environment are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• COVID-19
• built environment
• risk perception

This article is related to:

Research for city practice

Notes on contributors

The authors are current members and recent alumni of the Urban Realities Laboratory of the Department of Psychology at the University of Waterloo in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. The Urban Realities Laboratory studies the psychological impacts of urban environments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/23748834.2023.2294642