What Risks Are People Concerned About

Abstract

An unusual questionnaire was used to explore what risks concern laypeople. It asked respondents to list, in their own words, as many risks of personal concern as they could. They then selected the five risks of greatest concern and answered a set of specific questions about each. A coding scheme was developed for categorizing these responses and was shown to have good reliability. The questionnaire was administered to a heterogeneous convenience sample of subjects. They reported a very broad range of risks of concern, which differed in plausible ways as a function of their gender and age. Females and student‐age subjects were generally more concerned about the environment, whereas males and older subjects were more likely to mention health and safety risks. Both the extent of the risk‐reduction actions that they reported and their expressed willingness to pay for future risk reductions were greater for risk that presented a direct personal threat (e.g., health risks) than for risks that posed a diffuse threat to the environment or to people in general (e.g., pollution). Respondents perceived themselves as bearing primary responsibility for managing threats to their own health, but generally saw government as bearing a heavier responsibility for managing environmental risks (especially for pollutants) and war. The questionnaire instrument and coding structure developed for this work are well‐suited to a variety of future research applications. They provide a way to identify the risks that concern lay groups, as well as to track the evolution of those concerns over time.

Decision heuristics as predictors of public choice

“…The participants were first asked to list and describe in writing their most concerned issues that would determine their election decision. These self-generated issues were then labeled by numbers in a structured questionnaire table in which the participant would rate one issue at a time, for each of the two presidential candidates, on the following scales (1) the importance of an issue, (2) the agreeability rating regarding each candidate's policy on the issue, (3) MR satisfaction or dissatisfaction rating, and (4) Likelihood of Success assessment (see Table 1, for the application of a similar method in studies of risk perception see Fischer, Morgan, Fischhoff, Nair, & Lave, 1991).…”

Challenges to social capacity building in flood-affected areas of southern Poland

“…The underestimation of natural hazards, typical not only for Poland (Fischer, 1991;, results in weakening knowledge and motivational capacities -large flooding is then perceived as a "radical surprise" (Kuhlicke, 2010).…”

Temporal scales in ecological risk assessment

“…Although the public is interested in the welfare of species that are appealing, endangered, or of economic interest, other species may have more important or keystone roles in a particular ecosystem (Paine 1966). Moreover, public concerns seldom revolve around habitats and ecosystems (Fischer et al 1991) and these are often neglected endpoints in environmental impact statements.…”