Social Contagion of Risk Perceptions in Environmental Management Networks

An important requisite for improving risk communication practice related to contentious environmental issues is having a better theoretical understanding of how risk perceptions function in real‐world social systems. Our study applied Scherer and Cho's social network contagion theory of risk perception (SNCTRP) to cormorant management (a contentious environmental management issue) in the Great Lakes Basin to: (1) assess contagion effects on cormorant‐related risk perceptions and individual factors believed to influence those perceptions and (2) explore the extent of social contagion in a full network (consisting of interactions between and among experts and laypeople) and three “isolated” models separating different types of interactions from the full network (i.e., expert‐to‐expert, layperson‐to‐layperson, and expert‐to‐layperson). We conducted interviews and administered questionnaires with experts (e.g., natural resource professionals) and laypeople (e.g., recreational and commercial anglers, business owners, bird enthusiasts) engaged in cormorant management in northern Lake Huron (n = 115). Our findings generally support the SNCTRP; however, the scope and scale of social contagion varied considerably based on the variables (e.g., individual risk perception factors), actors (i.e., experts or laypeople), and interactions of interest. Contagion effects were identified more frequently, and were stronger, in the models containing interactions between experts and laypeople than in those models containing only interactions among experts or laypeople.     

基于复杂网络的信用风险传染模型研究

本文从信用风险持有者的心理和行为角度对信用风险传染过程进行了分析,通过引入信用风险传染的主体行为因素,建立了信用风险传染的网络模型。借助严格随机占优理论,分别探讨了社会网络中个体之间的关联关系、个体的风险态度、个体的风险抵御能力、金融市场监管者的监控强度和个体的网络结构特征对信用风险传染的影响机制,通过仿真实验进一步验证理论推到的正确性,并直观地刻画了信用风险传染的内部性和外部性对信用风险传染行为及其演化的影响。     

分类管控下的债务风险与风险传染网络研究

防范化解重大风险,守住不发生系统性金融风险的底线是我国经济工作的重心之一。本文针对部门债务,从债务口径、债务结构和偿付风险3个层次深入研究了实体经济债务风险的关键问题,提出了分类管控我国债务风险的理论模型。从部门间债务的比较分析中,本文发现非金融企业债务在实体经济债务中具有极高的系统重要性,针对这一特点,我们构建了双层交易对手方风险传染网络模型。以江苏省和山东省产业债发行人担保网为样本,基于该模型研究了区域非金融企业间债务风险传染结构,并根据综合节点度与对外风险敞口两类指标识别出若干核心风险传染节点。研究发现我国非金融企业部门内的债务间存在较强关联性,是潜在的区域系统性风险源。本文认为,我国当前的宏观债务问题存在国情特殊性,应尽快建立符合中国国情的债务风险和压力分析评估体系,为防范金融风险提供分类施策工具。     

基于熵空间交互理论的CRT网络信用风险传染模型

信用风险转移(Credit Risk Transfer,CRT)网络中信用风险传染已逐渐成为学术界和政策制定者关注的热点。本文基于熵空间交互理论,将CRT网络中银行和投资者之间空间距离与非线性耦合、银行的信用风险转移能力与投资者的风险偏好相结合,建立了CRT网络信用风险传染的熵空间模型。通过数值模拟和对参数的敏感性分析发现,模型可以很好地反映银行和投资者之间的空间距离与非线性耦合、银行的信用风险转移能力、信用风险在投资者节点上的集中程度、投资者的风险偏好和风险承受能力对CRT网络信用风险传染效应的影响机制。研究同时发现:CRT网络信用风险传染具有"本地效应"和"关联抑制效应"。     

基于企业行为偏好的企业间信用担保网络与风险传染研究

本文从行为金融学视角,结合复杂网络理论和信用担保关系选择机制构建了内生性企业间信用担保网络以及企业间信用担保网络风险传染模型,仿真分析了企业间信用担保网络结构及其风险传染演化特征。研究得到如下主要结论：(1)随着时间演化,企业间信用担保网络结构呈现“弱去中心化”特征,而且企业间信用担保网络的复杂性与稳定性增强;(2)企业资信水平不仅能够提高“担保圈”风险冲击概率,而且可以降低信用担保系统的不稳定性。随着企业影响力和企业风险认知水平增大,有助于增强冲击后企业信用担保系统的稳定性。企业风险偏好较小时,保证了“担保圈”内有效的流动性供给,但当企业风险偏好不断增强时,加剧了信用担保需求方的经营困境。(3)企业风险偏好对企业影响力、企业资信水平、企业风险认知水平发挥“强化效应”。企业资信水平与企业影响力具有“互为强化效应”。企业风险认知水平的“风险制约能力”强于企业资信水平的“风险强化能力”。企业风险认知水平与企业影响力对违约企业数量的影响发挥互为逆向效应且两者强度相当。     

Risk Perception and Social Acceptability of Technologies: The French Case

The authors present results of a February 1987 survey on judged frequency of mortality causes and risk perception of technologies in a representative sample of the French population. Although the French context is very different, and the impact of public controversies have been very limited on technological choices such as the nuclear energy program, strong similarities in risk perception of technologies are observed with results from U.S. surveys. Results, which could be worthwhile for other countries, suggest that risk perception is influenced by two different types of components. The first influence is the global feeling of "security" that society procures to its members. Such feeling depends on the individual's socioeconomic status, subjective state of health, and personal discomfort in daily life, and explains individual aversion to risk independently of the mortality causes or technologies involved. The second influence is the degree of perceived social legitimization of the activities involving risks. Risks of medical and transportation activities are strongly opposed to illegitimate risky behaviors (smoking, drugs, alcohol); technologies which have been an object of public debate (nuclear plants, the chemical industry, lead in gasoline) have an intermediate position reflecting the remaining uncertainties of public opinion about their risk–benefit balancing. Tentative conclusions for risk communication are proposed.     

Risk Perception and Movies: A Study of Availability as a Factor in Risk Perception

Media effects on risk perception have often been explained by Tversky and Kahneman's availability principle, but research has not consistently supported it. What seem like media effects based on availability may be effects of new information. In an experimental study, entertainment movies depicting dramatic risk events were shown. They were found to produce no average effects on perceived risks in spite of large mood effects and being perceived as credible. We found, however, evidence of idiosyncratic effects of the movies, that is, people reacted immediately after the movies with enhanced  or  diminished risk beliefs. These reactions had faded after 10 days. Implications for the availability heuristic and risk perception are discussed.     

嵌入网络舆情指数的中国金融机构系统性风险传染效应研究

首先基于文本挖掘技术构建反映投资者情绪的网络舆情指数,然后将所构建的网络舆情指数嵌入到系统性风险传染效应度量模型,得到修正的单指标非对称CoVaR模型,并运用线性分位数LASSO算法与局部多项式估计方法进行参数估计,以此为基础构建金融有向网络,进而对中国金融机构系统性风险传染效应进行实证分析。实证研究表明：(1)以单指标非对称CoVaR为代表的金融机构风险指标与网络舆情的协同变化趋势明显;(2)证券类和银行类金融机构对外部风险非常敏感,极易受到其他金融机构的影响,也极易影响其他金融机构;(3)非银行类机构在风险积累阶段占据重要位置,银行在风险爆发时刻占据重要位置;(4)相对于非银行类金融机构,银行类机构具有较强的传染能力。     

初次购买和升级购买中的社会传染

 随着社会化媒体的发展和传统广告的式微,学者和企业越来越重视用户之间的相互影响,即社会传染效应。已有关于社会传染的研究多关注产品的初次购买,很少有学者探讨社会传染在消费者升级购买阶段是否依然能够发生作用、哪些升级购买者的影响力更大、哪些未升级购买者更容易受到其他升级购买者的影响。        在总结已有研究的基础上,详细阐述社会传染源的信息性影响和规范性影响两条影响路径在升级阶段的作用,即与初次购买阶段相比,在升级购买阶段信息性影响减弱,而规范性影响增强。结合上述论断和已有研究中社会传染的购买者和未购买者的作用,首先分析社会传染是否在升级购买阶段发挥作用,并探讨哪些购买者在升级购买阶段能够发挥更大的影响力,哪些未购买者更容易受到影响;然后,与中国某大型虚拟世界运营公司合作进行田野实验,以虚拟产品的初次购买和升级购买为样本,探讨社会传染的作用;最后,应用控制产品异质性的多状态转移风险模型建构社会传染在初次购买和升级购买的作用,并验证前文的分析。        研究结果表明,①社会传染在升级过程中依然有效;②在不同阶段,购买者的影响力不同：初次购买阶段,与未购买者关系强度高的购买者拥有更强的影响力;升级购买阶段,与未升级购买者同质性更高的升级购买者影响力更大;③未购买者的易感性也不同：初次购买阶段,自身中心度低的未购买者更容易受到影响;升级购买阶段,中间社会地位的未升级购买者则更有可能成为被影响者。        详细阐述社会传染在升级购买中的作用,比较关键消费者的不同,强调社会传染在升级购买中的作用,同时也为企业在初次购买和产品升级过程中更好地定位消费者、促进消费者购买提供指导意义。     

资源外包网络的进化:一个社会网络的分析方法

资源外包网络的形成并非一蹴而就,而是一个渐进演化的过程,且在很大程度上是在企业社会资本的推动和结构孔的拉动共同作用下实现的。企业社会资本作用的发挥以信任为媒介加以传递,而结构孔的拉动作用更多地表现为位置优势,包括信息优势和控制优势。论文运用社会网络分析工具分别从企业的社会资本和结构孔两个角度剖析资源外包网络进化的特点和作用机理,并以丰田公司为例开展了案例分析。     

Salient Value Similarity, Social Trust, and Risk/Benefit Perception

It was postulated that shared values determine social trust in institutions and persons related to a technology: One has trust in people holding similar salient values. Furthermore, it was hypothesized that social trust has a positive influence on perceived benefits and a negative impact on perceived risks. Results of a survey of University of Zürich students indicated that the proposed causal model explained perception of pesticides, nuclear power, and artificial sweetener very well. When social trust was controlled, the relation between risks and benefits perceived diminished. Results indicate that social trust is a key predictive factor of the perceived risks and benefits of a technology, and provide support for the salient values similarity theory of social trust.     

Increasing Returns and Social Contagion in Cultural Industries

A formal definition of cultural industries is developed following four distinct features of cultural goods: (a) oversupply, (b) quality uncertainty, (c) network effects and (d) demand reversal. Drawing on economic and socio-psychological notions of ‘network’, increasing returns and social contagion effects are distinguished. Increasing returns may govern the adoption of standards when choices are binary, social contagion explains the diffusion of cultural goods when choices are multiple. Together, the four structural features delineating cultural industries account for curious competitive dynamics prevalent in cultural markets, such as the notorious 10 : 90 proportionality (under which 10% of cultural goods account for 90% of the market), causal ambiguity about the reasons for success, and the formation of fashions. Six managerial recommendations are advanced, focusing on a criticial circulation point triggering self-sustaining diffusion patterns. Finally ‘project-based enterprises’ and ‘network forms of governance’ are identified as the organizational forms most suited to the dynamics of the cultural markets.     

Risk Perception Among Smokers: A Qualitative Study

The aim of this qualitative study is to identify the dimensions people used to assess the risk of smoking and then compare them with those used by health professionals in primary healthcare. Five discussion groups were conducted. The field work was carried out in Barcelona (Spain), from February 2005 to January 2006. Data were analyzed following a semantic‐thematic categorical content analysis (ACC‐ts). Results showed that people tend to employ stereotypical discourses when evaluating the risk of smoking. Similarly, they reassess the risk in the context of their life experience and incorporate new nuances to the arguments sustaining their behavior. Once this reassessment takes place, the decision to continue smoking emerges, and smokers come up with additional arguments justifying their habit (i.e., age, benefits related to costs). Professionals are aware of this process and its multidimensional nature. Nevertheless, their discourse loses this multidimensional feature when discussing the strategies they use at smoking cessation interventions. This qualitative study increases the understanding of various meanings that people attribute to their life experience. These assumptions may be useful for developing health practices that are closer to people. As a practical utility of these results, it would be interesting to apply a preliminary assessment of the different meanings that people attribute to smoking from their life context in risk communication.     

Worry and Risk Perception

Risk perception is sometimes measured by means of judgments about worry, sometimes as perceived risk more directly. However, perceived level of risk calls for a more intellectual judgment and worry tends to refer to emotional reactions. These two are therefore not the same and need not be strongly correlated. Results reported here show that perceived risk and worry are indeed weakly correlated, both for generalized worry and for more specific measures of worry matched with the same hazard as risk ratings. A distinction is suggested between cognitive, abstract hazards and concrete, sensory hazards, with implications for the worry-perceived risk relationship. It was furthermore found by means of cluster analysis that there were groups of subject displaying different dynamics of risk and worry.     

Factors in Risk Perception

Risk perception is a phenomenon in search of an explanation. Several approaches are discussed in this paper. Technical risk estimates are sometimes a potent factor in accounting for perceived risk, but in many important applications it is not. Heuristics and biases, mainly availability, account for only a minor portion of risk perception, and media contents have not been clearly implicated in risk perception. The psychometric model is probably the leading contender in the field, but its explanatory value is only around 20% of the variance of raw data. Adding a factor of unnatural risk considerably improves the psychometric model. Cultural Theory, on the other hand, has not been able to explain more than 5–10% of the variance of perceived risk, and other value scales have similarly failed. A model is proposed in which attitude, risk sensitivity, and specific fear are used as explanatory variables; this model seems to explain well over 30–40% of the variance and is thus more promising than previous approaches. The model offers a different type of psychological explanation of risk perception, and it has many implications, e.g., a different approach to the relationship between attitude and perceived risk, as compared with the usual cognitive analysis of attitude.     

Personality Correlates of Risk Perception

The aim of the present study was to systematically examine the variations of the effects of (1) transitional anxiety states and enduring anxiety dispositions, and (2) worldviews (hierarchic, egalitarian, individualist, and fatalist), as a function of the type of hazard considered. Ten risk factors were identified. Transitional anxiety contributed significantly to the prediction of four of these risk factors. The more anxious the respondents, the higher were their scores for the Common Individual Hazards, Pollutants, and Outdoor Activities factors, and the lower were their scores for the Public Transportation and Energy Production factor. Enduring anxiety contributed significantly to the prediction of the Psychotropic Drugs factor. The more anxious the respondents, the lower were their scores. The four worldview factors contributed significantly to the prediction of three of these risk factors. The more fatalistic the respondents, the lower were their scores for the Pollutants factor, and the higher were their scores for the Public Transportation and Energy Production factor; the more egalitarian the respondents, the higher were their scores for the Pollutants factor; the more hierarchic the respondents, the lower were their scores for the Public Transportation and Energy Production factor; and the more individualistic the respondents, the higher were their scores for the Pollutants and Deviance, Sex, and Addiction factors.