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Risk percep tion is the subjective judgment that people make about exposure to a hazard, the probability of occurrence and producing harm, and the dimensions of the event in a context of limited knowledge. That hazard may be of a natural, technological, environmental, or health nature. Each person has to live with risk and resolve in a situation of limited rationality because information is assumed to be costly, incomplete, and uncertain. All humans are exposed to risk because every human activity involves some degree of risk as a part of everyday life and, therefore, individuals seek to minimize it guided by their particular perception.
This is very important but is not the only determining factor of human behavior; perception does not necessarily correlate with the actual risk dimensions because other personal, social, and political factors are intervening in the shaping of the individual and social understanding of risk. Experts are predisposed to think of risk assessment and management as objective and rational processes, but experts, scientists, and decision makers are still influenced by their perceptions as individuals. Although the term risk perception has a wide acceptance, some authors prefer the concept risk judgment.
The principal factors that affect the perception and determine acceptability of risk, level of concern, and ultimately risk-taking are: the characteristics of the hazard, the characteristics of the individual, and how the information is communicated.
Hazard Characteristics
Given that different types of risk generate different behavioral reactions, identifying their nature facilitates the comprehension of the relationship. Individuals overestimate the risk associated with unusual hazards, such as a meteorite fall, and novel hazards, such as SARS, while they tend to accept more common risks that are regarded as an inevitable part of everyday life, such as driving, and those that add value to life, such as practicing high risk sports-scuba diving, skiing, rock climbing, etc. Low frequency hazards induce some individuals to ignore the risk and to not take actions to minimize their exposure but, on the contrary, to increase it. This is linked to cost judgment-if individual benefits are perceived to be lower than mitigation costs, then inaction occurs, and people maintain or increase vulnerability.
A risk taken under the personal control and responsibility of an individual-a voluntary exposure-is more readily accepted than an involuntary risk, which is outside the control of the individual, such as driving a car versus flying. There is more concern about hazards which, despite having a low frequency, are associated with a low survival rate. There is less concern about those that are frequent and have more victims, and are associated with a high survival rate, i.e., plane crashes versus car accidents.
Risk derived from technological hazards is commonly less accepted than risk associated to natural hazards, due to its associated interference with nature. People feel the threat has originated from a supposedly inappropriate individual or company action, and social costs are estimated to be higher, the result of social inequity and greater exposure of the less favored, like in the big industrial disasters of Bhopal or Chernobyl. New technologies generate a certain level of perception that is an early indicator of some of the associated potential risks that have to be successfully addressed in risk communication before implementing the new development to avoid having the perception remain strongly rooted. High frequency exposure leads to a low risk perception as opposed to low frequency and more catastrophic events. Situations are perceived as more risky if they have delayed or long term effects; if they are difficult to understand; or if alternative options do not exhibit demonstrable benefits or advantages. Delayed effects, low frequency, unintelligibility, or novelty bring uncertainty, an undesirable state.
Individual Perception
Perception of a risk comprises both cognitive and affective components, and risk communication should focus on the two, as decisions are driven by both components. Affection, which relies on images and associations and materializes as concern, is often assumed to be post-cognitive because it is a manifestation of the experiential system, which enabled human beings to survive before the complete development of the rational system. But perceptions based on affection are not necessarily inadequate. Affective reactions to risk occur involuntarily, rapidly, and sometimes drive immediate actions. Both the rational and emotional systems work in parallel and depend on each other. People base their judgment not only on what they think about it but also on what they feel about it, jointly shaping individual perception.
Optimistic bias (also known as unrealistic optimism) is a phenomenon observed in some individuals consisting on the tendency to believe that they are less exposed or less likely than other people to suffer the effects of a hazard, and more likely to experience benefits. This perception is based on an
absence of motivation to admit vulnerability, or on cognitive reasons, such as the failure to comprehend or apply probabilistic principles. Optimistic bias generally comes up in situations when risk is perceived to be under individual control rather than under unmanageable conditions.
Risk perception is socially and individually constructed as the result of knowledge, education, experience, and values. Individuals, on the basis of gender, age, income, disabilities, and other characteristics, have a unique perception of their environment and experiences associated with those individual-level factors. Gender differences relate to hazard magnitude and risk awareness. It has been observed that women tend to judge risks as greater than do men. Men with similar educational levels have been found to consider themselves more knowledgeable of hazard, risk, and eventual outcomes than women. Age seems to principally determine variation in the sensibility to the type of hazard. Religion affects individual values because it offers an elaborated interpretation of reality, adjusting behavior to predetermined patterns, although the level of literacy tunes the function of this variable.
It has been observed that certain communities ignore warnings of a hazard or disregard risk response because they consider these to be Western points of view. The level of knowledge gained has an effect on the degree of uncertainty experienced and the subsequent behavior, adjusting risk memory. The sources of information may be both risk information or earlier personal experience with risk. Nevertheless, less-educated people are more likely to misinterpret information and to deny evidence gained from scientific analysis and observation in favor of religious values of divine destiny. This suggests that risk communication strategies need to be adapted to local conditions every time.
The effects and magnitude of an event or condition are emphasized over the probability. People find it difficult to interpret percentages or rates alike, tend to interpret risk in binary terms of occurrence or nonoccurrence, and to emphasize those potential effects which are, apart from negative, unknown, as opposed to the positive outcomes of risk. Decisions made are a trade-off between losses and benefits, however, gains are most commonly ignored or considered less important.
Attitudes are the result of a rational integration of expectancies and values in consideration of certain outcomes from a behavior. So behavior is the manifestation of an attitude, although various behaviors may result from the same attitude for the intervention of other expectancies.
Risk taking is the attitude with respect to exposure to a hazard and the assumption of the effects of an event, and is primarily associated with perception of returns and risk. There are two identifiable basic attitudes with respect to risk: Risk averse and risk seeking. An individual does not steadily have the same attitude at different times in the same context.
The field of finance explains this attitude in the framework of risk-return. Within this framework, the preference for risk is the result of a trade off between an expected benefit and estimated loss, in the context of a perceived risk. Those subjects who seem to have a preference for and appear to take big risks have an optimistic perception. They seem to recognize the differences between a situation of uncertainty and uncontrollable factors and a situation where management helps to reduce uncertainty by means of information availability and mitigation. What appears to be a risk seeking attitude is translated into a managed low risk situation.
Perceptual differences of risk among experts, policy makers, and laypersons often lead to conflict and mistrust. Science is seen in the double perspective of source of knowledge and source of risk. Some technologies are perceived as a threat, such as nuclear power or genetically modified food, and a decline in public trust in technology has been observed. In the same way, knowledge brings certainties, but distrust in science partly originates in the scientific method, which constantly questions standard science as new observations are made to develop new understanding.
Distrust also stems from questioning the limits of scientific knowledge, in the conviction that science cannot explain everything. Accordingly, people perform a metajudgment process, a judgment of what to believe of what experts say. The two rival rationalities collide and where scientists see opportunities, lay people recognize uncertainties and extend distrust to the whole scientific community.
In order to increase the influence of science in shaping public attitudes to risk and gaining public support for increased research, the gap between the scientific community and society should be broken by approaching the people, improving communication and using comprehensible language. Nevertheless, experts and nonexperts alike are prone to misinterpretation of facts. The expert’s knowledge and perception of risk is not value-free but built subject to the same cognitive, affective, and cultural constraints, though he or she commonly perceives a lower risk level.
Trust
Trust is the expectation that an individual, group or institution will predictably act appropriately and favorably and will be reliable in responding to prevention, response, and recovery situations. It is the basis for gaining support in decision making, but its effect on perception seems to be fairly small. Public trust is a fragile condition, difficult to maintain and hard to restore when lost, so decision makers should address the reinforcement of trust in risk assessment and in their capacity to manage risk. Conversely, risk perception and judgment is not easy to change, so a policy option is to seek modifying community perception of risk management and reach a level of tolerance of certain risks in return for an effectiveness of risk preparedness and response.
Administrators take their measure of public perceptions into account to make decisions, and it has been found that people and the politicians they elect share risk perception and priorities. Furthermore, they are predisposed to side with the public in their reluctance to trust scientific understanding. However, their beliefs do not fully correspond to public opinion for it is partly shaped by the mass media and the more active and concerned citizens, stakeholders who effectively communicate their own perceptions. Also, elites from administration, media, and the scientific community show more influence from ideological thinking than lay people do. The study of risk perception has occasionally been seen as a threat by experts and politicians, because it may increase the role of the people in the process of decision. Thus, public participation in risk assessment and management is debated, because it seems not to increase trust in risk management. Still, the complexity derived from the intervention of psychological factors and the need for gaining public acceptance and support in implementing decisions makes public participation in governance necessary.
The Precautionary Principle
When concern about a specific process challenges current policy practice, additional measures based on the precautionary principle are usually invoked. In this sense public participation may be seen as an application of the precautionary principle. The application of the precautionary principle at an early stage of a hazard emergence may be operative and functional as a political option under uncertainty and as a response to public concern. However, it should not replace risk assessment, nor become a basis for political inaction. There is not sufficient agreement in regard to the application of the precautionary principle as a risk management strategy in risk perception. Critics maintain that action should only be based on scientific evidence, because public perception can be easily manipulated toward spurious interests.
The precautionary principle maintains that action should be taken, regardless of the likelihood of a risk, to mitigate and prevent the impact from a hazard by adopting various courses of action. The most immediate strategies are eliminating the risk source or minimizing exposure. The precautionary principle applies when there is a high degree of scientific uncertainty or when probability is not being understood by decision makers or the public. In these cases political decision makers may take action to handle public fears. However, two contrasting results may result from this action. While some authors claim precautionary measures will increase trust in risk management and a decrease in risk perception, others maintain the adoption of these measures will produce risk amplification, by reinforcing the perception that a risk is real in spite of the scientific uncertainty.
Risk Communication
A basic statement is that with information accessible, people can make informed-not better-decisions. Also, information availability does not mean more knowledgeable decisions, or full understanding of the dimensions of risk, for the intervention of cognitive processes and attitude. Sometimes it happens that the more information there is about the hazard, the more resistance there will be toward accepting the source of risk, because undesirable components are identified in the process. The role of decision makers is to contribute to adjusting the discrepancies-on the one hand, between non-perceived and substantial risks and, on the other, between perceived and unsubstantial risks. Information on risk is critical, but the impact on perception seems to be very sensitive to how it is transmitted.
Risk communication is a process-related measure, like public participation, with a substantial influence on people’s risk perception since it favors more fully informed and rational decisions. The process of communication involves both conveying and interpreting information on the dimensions of the hazard, and the relationship between the source and the probability of the event. The presentation of the information has a notable influence on risk interpretation and perception, because the same message can be framed positively or negatively. The effect is comparable to transmitting uncertainty; in the case of a low degree of scientific knowledge, the public interest is driven to the unknown instead of to the known facts. Positive framing, or highlighting ways to avoid the hazard or mitigate its effects, helps people to assume necessary risks, like in sessions of chemotherapy, strengthening the positive effects against those negative. With the use of negative framing communication the adoption of low cost protection measures while avoiding a high impact may be strengthened. This class of presentation has more effect on individualistic subjects than on cooperative subjects.
Mass Media
People receive most information on hazards and risk management through the mass media. Its role in risk communication is decisive in changing community perception and in the definition of priorities of the public and administration, as has been observed when there have been changes in the amount of media coverage of an event. However, some media channels have drawbacks. The synchronicity between the news and coverage does not leave sufficient time to ponder how to process it, or to use qualified sources of information. The use of conventional or unconventional channels has a major impact, since they have various delay times. The journalist does not need to be a risk communication specialist and may interpret the information inadequately, like the other actors. The attitude of the receiver can have a major effect on the understanding and interpretation of the message. In turn, the attitude may be influenced by political, public, or media pressures. Public persuasion to accept a risk, challenging a rooted negative perception, may prove counterproductive if they feel intimidated to change their judgment.
Models of Risk Communication
A first model of risk communication, predominant since the early 1980s, understood the process as a one-way transfer of scientific information to increase people’s knowledge, dismiss misconceptions, and support public policies of risk management. By the late 1990s, the dominant risk communication model shifted to conceive risk in its complexity and recognize its social dimension. From this perspective, science, politics, and social actors interact, negotiating their interests and perceptions in the public arena. Risk communication becomes an imperative instrument to improving governance by gaining and maintaining public confidence and trust in public institutions. It seeks to identify the critical gaps and misconstructions in risk knowledge by analyzing the level of understanding of hazard, risk, mitigation and response, in order to improve the efficiency of the communication effort.
Disciplines within the social sciences have developed several approaches and theories to explain the roles and interactions between psychological, social, and economic factors in the construction of risk, as the natural sciences do in the study of the dimensions of hazard. Three major theories have been elaborated to approach the study of risk perception: The psychometric paradigm, the social theory of risk, and the cultural theory.
Preliminary research and earlier theory was completed by Chauncey Starr who in 1969 published a paper in Science titled, “Social Benefit versus Technological Risk,” identifying that human acceptability of a certain technological risk condition is the result of a balance through trial and error between the accepted level of risk and social benefits. According to this, the more benefits gained the more risk accepted, until reaching a sort of climax. He also found that voluntary risks are more acceptable than imposed risks, even if the former are larger. In his study Starr applied the revealed preference method, based on the assumption that decisions are based on their intent to maximize their utility.
The Psychometric Paradigm
Although the psychometric paradigm was elaborated by Paul Slovic, Baruch Fischhoff, and Sarah Lichtenstein in the 1980s, earlier studies were performed by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky in the 1970s. They formulated concepts that broadly influenced the social sciences, such as the cognitive processes underlying the formation of preference and belief and problem framing in communication, and gave rise to the new field of behavioral economics. According to these authors people are guided by heuristics to interpret risk information. When individuals face a complex problem or do not have sufficient information they tend to simplify it, relying on heuristics, an approach for problem-solving or finding explanations. Heuristics are often very useful and yield valuable solutions but sometimes lead to erroneous judgments. Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman have identified three important heuristics employed when making judgments under uncertainty: Representativeness, adjustment, and availability.
Representativeness is used to assess the probability of an event by finding a comparable event, with similar features or generating process, assuming that the probabilities will be similar. Anchoring and adjustment, considered the most important for understanding risk perception, is used to assess an outcome on the basis of incomplete information as a starting point and then adjust it to make an estimation. In the light of new information a new assessment is accomplished. Availability is used to assess the likelihood of an event or an outcome on the basis of the accessibility to other associated events in the memory. Easily recalled events, which had a major public impact in media, are considered to be more probable than scientific evidences. The gainloss asymmetry indicates that individuals are conservative when offered gains and adventurous when faced with loss because this threat has a greater impact than an equivalent gain. This heuristics is the basis for insurance.
The theory behind the psychological perspective argues that public perception of risk is psychologically determined, driven by emotional reactions, and its subjective nature can be measured by qualitative risk characteristics. Risk perception measurement is done by using any of the two general approaches elaborated. With an objective approach the individual is asked to evaluate prescribed levels of risk for different situations; with a subjective approach the individual is asked to rate a situation according to their own levels. The attributes assessed may be global, ranking the hazard as a whole, or dimensional, differentiating some particular features. After surveying people’s ratings the large sets of data are reduced to those few dimensions which capture most of the variability. The results identified three key predictors of people’s perception: Familiarity with the risk, dread or impact potential, and exposure. While earlier psychological theories basically focused on cognitive processes, later ones put more emphasis on affect, taking the traditional concept of dread.
The Risk Society
The publication of 1992’s Risk Society by Ulrich Beck catalyzed the study of another dimension of risk. According to Beck, this is unquestionably a risk society, after the scale of environmental change turned global with climate change or biodiversity loss, and uncertainty is an intrinsic component of the political process. In this new stage technology had a key role in homogenizing risk; the former class society has been substituted by a society that does not distinguish among groups.
The role of technology is two-sided; it brings solutions to deal with the problems and reduce uncertainty but, at the same time, generates risk. To produce risk has the side effect of being exposed to it. There is no chance for the application of the precautionary principle to avoid uncertainty. It is more advantageous to gain control of uncertainty and integrate it in decision making than to try to eradicate it in vain. There should not be a priori rationalities of risk, but they should instead be elaborated as the result of social negotiation through the process from analysis to management and from assessment to decision making. The various actors provide different categories of what is risk and what is acceptable, in an examination where experts are just another stakeholder.
The Cultural Theory of Risk
The cultural theory of risk is based on the work of anthropologist Mary Douglas and political scientist Aaron Wildavsky, published in 1982. This theory focuses on the dependent condition of individual risk perception on group membership over individual factors. Within this framework, culture biases individual perception. Risk perception becomes a group phenomenon where common concerns contribute to strengthen its own articulation. It assumes that individual preferences for ways of life are patterned in four scaled world views or cultural solidarities: Hierarchy, egalitarianism, individualism and fatalism, based on shared ideas about how society, individuals, and the real world relate.
Its scaled standpoint and effect on risk perception is still controversial, but the views have been correlated to variables of age, gender, income, political orientation, and educational level. The world views reflect the extent to which individuals are incorporated into archetypal social groups. As group perceptions and attitudes differ, risk information impact is target-group dependent, so risk information strategies need to be tuned and adapted to each audience.
Hierarchists are characterized by a reliance on authority and regulation, believe in the rightness of rules and structures, and are afraid of disruptions of the present social order. Egalitarians are willing to accept group decisions based on negotiation even if they conflict with their particular interests. They favor voluntary social connectedness and reject authority by virtue of its position. Individualists tend to prefer few controls, beyond those required to maintain property, respond to the logic of market competition and reject cooperation, beyond contingent circumstances. Fatalists tend to feel pessimistic about current social structures and fear the worst. An action would be always uncertain and even counterproductive, so they reject cooperation and are isolated.
Bibliography:
- Ulrich Beck, Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity (SAGE, 1992);
- Mary Douglas and Aaron Wildavsky, Risk and Culture: An Essay on the Selection of Technological and Environmental Dangers (University of California Press, 1983);
- Daniel Kahneman, Paul Slovic, and Amos Tversky, , Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases (Cambridge University Press, 1982);
- Lennart Sjoberg, “Factors in Risk Perception,” Risk Analysis (v. 20/1, 2000);
- Paul Slovic, The Perception of Risk (Earthscan, 2000);
- Chauncey Starr, 2003, “The Precautionary Principle Versus Risk Analysis,” Risk Analysis (v.23/1, 2003);
- Aaron Wildavsky and Karl Dake, “Theories of Risk Perception: Who Fears What and Why?” Daedalus (v.119/4, 1990);
- Iain Wilkinson, “Social Theories of Risk Perception: At Once Indispensable and Insufficient,” Current Sociology (v.49/1, 2001).
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