The Theory of Risk Homeostasis: Implications for Safety and Health

No strategy for countermeasure design or future directions of research in the areas of human behavior which leads to traffic accidents or lifestyle-related diseases can be rationally developed without an acceptable working theory of human behavior in these domains. For this purpose, an attempt has been made to conceptually integrate the available evidence with respect to the role of human behavior in the causation of road accidents. From this integrative effort it would seem that the accident rate is ultimately dependent on one factor only, the target level of risk in the population concerned which acts as the reference variable in a homeostatic process relating accident rate to human motivation. Various policy tactics for the purpose of modifying this target level of risk have been pointed out and the theory of risk homeostasis has been speculatively extended to the areas of lifestyle-dependent morbidity and mortality.