  Motivated by the importance of individual differences in risk perception and
behavior change in people's responses to infectious disease outbreaks
(particularly the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic), we propose a heterogeneous
Disease-Behavior-Information (hDBI) transmission model, in which people's risk
of getting infected is influenced by information diffusion, behavior change,
and disease transmission. We use both a mean-field approximation and Monte
Carlo simulations to analyze the dynamics of the model. Information diffusion
influences behavior change by allowing people to be aware of the disease and
adopt self-protection, and subsequently affects disease transmission by
changing the actual infection rate. Results show that (a) awareness plays a
central role in epidemic prevention; (b) a reasonable fraction of
"over-reacting" nodes are needed in epidemic prevention; (c) R0 has different
effects on epidemic outbreak for cases with and without asymptomatic infection;
(d) social influence on behavior change can remarkably decrease the epidemic
outbreak size. This research indicates that the media and opinion leaders
should not understate the transmissibility and severity of diseases to ensure
that people could become aware of the disease and adopt self-protection to
protect themselves and the whole population.
