The Risks of “Putting the Numbers in Context”: A Cautionary Tale

Freudenburg, William R.; Rursch, Julie A.

doi:10.1111/j.1539-6924.1994.tb00064.x

Cited by 56 publications

(42 citation statements)

References 12 publications

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“…For example, Freudenburg and Rursch (1994) found that explaining a risk of one in 1,000,000 as "less than the risk of smoking a couple dozen cigarettes" made experimental subjects less willing to accept a hypothetical hazardous waste incinerator than they were when the probabilistic information was presented without interpretation. The authors suggest that this may be because the company proposing the incinerator was viewed with suspicion, so a seemingly favorable risk comparison was seen as suspect if provided by a company representative-"Yeah, we've heard that before.…”

Section: Empirical Results Regarding Risk Comparisonsmentioning

confidence: 99%

On the state of the art: risk communication to the public

Bier¹

2001

Reliability Engineering & System Safety

187

108

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Section: Empirical Results Regarding Risk Comparisonsmentioning

confidence: 99%

On the state of the art: risk communication to the public

Bier¹

2001

Reliability Engineering & System Safety

187

108

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“…Also, different stakeholders have different preferences about what a forecast should do. Thus efforts to 'educate' the public are unlikely to make them see forecasts as experts do (Freudenburg & Rursch 1994).A more general but related concern is that research should be usable science that has demonstrable social value (Glantz 1996). To qualify, a research program must identify potential users and persuade them of its practical value (Pielke & Glantz 1995).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

User perspectives of climate forecasts: crop producers in Pergamino, Argentina

Letson¹,

Llovet

Podestá

et al. 2001

Clim. Res.

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A necessary initial step in assessing the value of climate information for regional agriculture is to gauge user perceptions concerning the use of that information. We attempt to do so for cereal and oilseed production in Pergamino, Argentina, located in the Pampas, one of the world's major agricultural regions. A survey of 200 farmers identified climate forecast scale and the reliability of the source of forecast as critical obstacles to adoption. Users' incomplete knowledge of how El Niño-Southern Oscillation affects their region may also pose an obstacle to greater use of climate information. A related problem is that users sometimes confuse the different time scales of weather and climate forecasting. Research and outreach to downscaling forecasts temporally and spatially toward user communities would help close the gap of expectations between forecast user and provider, and would facilitate the trust building process between the two that must precede adoption. KEY WORDS: Climate information · Attitudes · ENSO · AgricultureResale or republication not permitted without written consent of the publisher Clim Res 19: 57-67, 2001 priorities and may undermine our ability to provide useful information. Scientists need to know how the public is likely to respond to ENSO-based climate forecasts because those responses alter the economic influence of climatic impacts (Burns 1999). Policy makers should understand user needs, to realize the potential economic value from the emerging technology of ENSO-based climate forecasting (Changnon 1996).To assess perceptions of ENSO-based climatic forecasting, we used focus groups and a user survey to approach cereal and oilseed producers in Pergamino, Argentina, located in the climatically favorable eastern portion of the Pampas, one of the world's major agricultural regions (Fig. 1). We focus on Argentina for several reasons. Argentina is a major agricultural producer. The value of its agricultural exports was 50 to 60% that of its overall exports and 5.5 to 9.6% of its GDP (gross domestic product) over 1989 (InterAmerican Development Bank 1999. In Argentina, interannual climatic variability causes high variability in crop yields and returns (Parellada et al. 1998, Messina et al. 1999, Podestá et al. 1999a, Ferreyra et al. 2001.1 Since the economic reforms of 1991, rising grain prices, relative to those for beef, have induced an expansion of cultivated areas that amplifies the effects of anomalous climate (Basualdo 1995). 2 The predominant soil in Pergamino is a typical Argiudoll (Paruelo & Sala 1993). Characteristic crop rotations include maize, soybean, and a wheat-soybean relay. Median annual precipitation is 937 mm. Hall et al. (1992) give a description of the climate, soils, and crop production systems in the Pampas. We take an empirical case study approach so that we can identify a specific context for climate information in agricultural decision making. However, the similarity in production scale, crops grown and technology in the Pampas to those in other ma...

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“…Another way to communicate health risks is to provide messages that describe the connected chain of events that may cause the risk, like a personal testimonial of somebody describing how he/she was confronted with the risk, to make the hazard more vivid (Koehler, 1991). When informing people about unknown risks, the risk could be compared to hazards with similar dimensional profiles (Freudenburg & Rursch, 1994;Visschers et al, 2007). Apart from these presentation formats, there are factors that may influence the effects of risk information such as the qualitative characteristics of the risk (e.g., dread, likelihood, novelty; Skinner et al, 1999;Slovic, 1987), individual differences (e.g., experience, relevance; Rothman & Schwarz, 1998), the described context in which the risk takes place (e.g., culture, society, surroundings; Weber & Hilton, www.intechopen.com 1990), or additional information on, for example, how to deal with possible barriers regarding the recommended health actions (Ruiter et al, 2001).…”

Section: Risk Communication Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%