A time to sense and respond: Spotting accelerating change amidst the Coronavirus crisis

There is no sense in obscuring it: Coronavirus is primarily a public health tragedy. We can maintain some optimism that with available medical care, new treatments and eventually a vaccine, things will be mitigated. But a growing number of individuals and families are going to experience loss, fear and anxiety about their short and long-term health prospects.

New external risks, and their effects on people’s day-to-day actions are well studied. One phenomenon that is particularly worth considering when we think about individual responses is the ‘availability cascade’ of these events: the process whereby individuals transition from being vaguely aware of a new threat, to understanding and engaging with it, to becoming fixated on it and the risks it presents. This final phase tends to coincide with the time they are ‘surrounded’ by it in their social and media networks. Unlike some recent epidemics such as HIV/AIDs, Coronavirus has rapidly passed into this final stage and looks likely to stay there for the foreseeable future.

That means the threat of the virus is likely to remain highly ‘available’ in people’s minds for many years to come, perhaps over and above other issues. They will continue to take action to limit the spread of these sorts of infections, and value things that reflect their own heightened care for hygiene and disease vigilance. Products and services that protect from or proactively remove threats like the virus will be valued. Similarly, individuals are likely to tolerate and even welcome regulation and inconvenience if it has a role in maintaining this protection. Organisations should be putting in place measures that see stopping the spread of infections as business as usual.

Of all the effects of the crisis, economic turmoil is probably the most familiar. However, it would be a mistake to assume the impact, changes and recovery will be a replica of the last financial crisis or others from history. What we do know is that prior shocks fundamentally shift the economic behaviour of the generations that experience them. Malmendier & Nagel investigated the financial attitudes of 50 years of American’s from 1964-2004. They found that those who had experienced the economic downturns of the 70s were far more cautious when investing and more risk averse, compared to those who had grown up in the relative boom years of the 1990s.

We don’t know the full nature of the economic effects yet - but it’s likely to have a similar long term impact on the financial behaviour of those of us living through it. We might expect those in their early adult lives to adjust attitudes to risk and saving. They might become ‘super savers’, or become fixated on reducing overheads and avoiding debt. The need for more self-sufficiency might well extend beyond money - with some increases in interest for domestic energy production and grow-your-own food already starting to emerge. There’s also likely to be considerable personal disruption for individuals, who may look to switch careers, job paths or long term outlooks. Finally, with an increase in hardship, we’re likely to see an unfortunate rise in crime - and this is likely to play out as digitally mediated fraud and scams. So security and a need for protection is likely to be echoed within consumer and organisational digital service demands.