The authors examine consumer perceptions of health risk in the context of two health-related domains in which they investigate the influence of reference standard and perceived level of covariation between risky behavior and a negative health outcome across a population. The results of two studies show that the perceived level of behavior–outcome covariation moderates the effect of the reference standard that consumers use to assess health risk. Specifically, the research shows that when the perceived level of behavior–outcome covariation is high/low, consumers’ estimates of health risks are higher when their current level of risky behavior is compared with the range/mean of their previous risky behavior.
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