Risk Communication in the Real World

Rigorous health risk assessments of site-specific projects are generally little understood by nontechnical decision makers and the public and often appear to them to obfuscate a straightforward answer to their fundamental question: “Is the project safe?” The focus on risk, usually out of context of benefits, deprives the reader of the opportunity to make a fully informed decision on the proposal. While the risk assessment tools may need to be refashioned, confidence in the analytical process can be improved, partly through more citizen involvement, as well as through more effective communication of the conservatism of the assumptions, the thoroughness of the process, and the significance of the results in comparison to other commonly accepted involuntary exposures and risks.     

Risk Communication in Environmental Restoration Programs

The author advocates adoption of a convergence model in place of the traditional source-receiver model of communication for communicating with members of the public who have a stake in remediation of a nearby site. The source-receiver model conceives of communication as the transmission of a message from a risk management agency (sender) to a target audience of the public (receivers). The underlying theme is that the sender intends to change the perception of the receiver of either the issue or the sender of information. The author draws on her experience at a Department of Energy (DoE) site undergoing remediation to illustrate why the convergence model is more appropriate in the context of cleanup. This alternative model focuses on the Latin derivation of communication as sharing or making common to many (i.e., as involving a relationship between participants who engage in a process of communication). The focus appears to be consistent with recently issued DoE policy that calls for involving the public in identifying issues and problems and in formulating and evaluating decision alternatives in cleanup. By emphasizing context, process, and participants, as opposed to senders and receivers, the model identifies key issues to address in facilitating consensus concerning the risks of cleanup. Similarities between the institutional context of DoE and Department of Defense (DoD) suggest that a convergence model may also prove to be an appropriate conceptual foundation for risk communication at contaminated DoD sites.     

Results of a National Symposium on Risk Communication: Next Steps for Government Agencies

A national symposium of risk communication practitioners and researchers was held in 1994 to discuss next steps to improve government agencies'risk communication practices. The symposium focused on three issues which a survey of researchers and practitioners indicated were priorities for risk communication research: integrating outside concerns into agency decision-making; communicating with communities of different races, ethnic backgrounds and incomes; and evaluation of risk communication. There are indications that the working assumptions underlying these issues are shifting in several distinctive ways. For example, a shift from simply communicating risk to forging partnerships with communities was clearly evident throughout the symposium. Communicating with different social, ethnic, and racial groups gained recognition as a vital component of the risk communication research agenda. Agencies themselves should be the subject of study, according to many symposium participants who were concerned less about the so-called irrationality of the public and more about the reluctance of agencies to encourage risk communication.     

Improving Risk Communication in Government: Research Priorities

Despite the increased interest in risk communication among government agencies, there is evidence that agencies'risk communication practices lag. We conducted a study to explore which risk communication research would be most important to improve government agencies'risk communication practices. Qualitative interviews and a survey of 145 risk communication experts based in academic institutions and government agencies explored how important research on each of 48 topics would be to improving agencies'risk communication efforts. Respondents identified topics within three areas as priorities for further research: 1) involving communities in agency decisionmaking; 2) communicating with communities of different races, ethnic backgrounds, and incomes; and 3) evaluating risk communication. Both practitioners and researchers responded to additional statements about agencies'risk communication practices with reservations about staff and managers'commitment to effective communication about environmental issues. We discuss the implications of these findings.     

Six Propositions on Public Participation and Their Relevance for Risk Communication

New societal obligations for communicating risk information are emerging in a variety of contexts. This article draws upon the lengthy societal experience with citizen participation programs to identify how risk communication efforts may be effectively structured and implemented. Six major propositions address such themes as means/ends differences in expectations, the timing of the program, the role of credibility and trust, the need for technical and analytical resources, differing thresholds of public involvement, and limitations upon current understandings. Key conclusions for the design of risk communication programs are set forth.     

Nanotechnology Risk Communication Past and Prologue

Nanotechnologies operate at atomic, molecular, and macromolecular scales, at scales where matter behaves differently than at larger scales and quantum effects can dominate. Nanotechnologies have captured the imagination of science fiction writers as science, engineering, and industry have leapt to the challenge of harnessing them. Applications are proliferating. In contrast, despite recent progress the regulatory landscape is not yet coherent, and public awareness of nanotechnology remains low. This has led risk researchers and critics of current nanotechnology risk communication efforts to call for proactive strategies that do more than address facts, that include and go beyond the public participation stipulated by some government acts. A redoubling of nanotechnology risk communication efforts could enable consumer choice and informed public discourse about regulation and public investments in science and safety.     

Industry Response to SARA Title III: Pollution Prevention, Risk Reduction, and Risk Communication

This paper reports results from a survey designed to: (1) evaluate changes in industrial pollution prevention practices since the passage of the landmark environmental legislation, the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act of 1986, also known as SARA Title III, and (2) identify those factors that may contribute to an industrial facility engaging in pollution prevention and risk communication activities. The survey was conducted under a Cooperative Agreement between the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Columbia University Center for Risk Communication. Evidence from the survey indicates that a wide variety of waste and pollution reduction activities have been undertaken since passage of the Act. Virtually all facilities surveyed in the pulp and paper, chemical, and petroleum and refining industries reported that they had reduced pollutants or wastes on at least one often measures, including reducing toxic air emissions. Most facilities indicated paying more attention to pollution prevention activities as a result of SARA Title III and half reported that their communication activities have also increased.     

Why Rules for Risk Communication Are Not Enough: A Problem-Solving Approach to Risk Communication

Current work on risk communication offers practitioners helpful guidelines and rules such as "speak clearly" and "speak with compassion." While important, these guidelines have limitations. They offer practitioners and scholars little aid in determining why a communication encounter failed. Also, they do not help practitioners anticipate and overcome likely difficulties in future risk situations, nor can they help locate information about how to reduce these difficulties. To overcome the limitations of rule-based approaches to risk communication, this paper describes a diagnostic or problem-solving approach. This approach maintains that instead of rules, people need bases for anticipating likely obstacles to effective communication and selecting approaches that reduce these difficulties. Research on building trust, increasing awareness, deepening comprehension, gaining agreement, and motivating action is available in fields such as communication, educational psychology, science education, marketing, counseling, negotiation, and disaster response. This paper describes a framework that assists scholars and practitioners in: (a) identifying communication goals; (b) determining principal obstacles to those goals; and (c) selecting research-based methods for overcoming or minimizing these difficulties and achieving communication objectives.     

Improving Risk Communication

This paper explores reasons for difficulties in communicating risks among analysts, the laypublic, media, and regulators. Formulating risk communication problems as decisions involving objectives and alternatives helps to identify strategies for overcoming these difficulties. Several strategies are suggested to achieve risk communication objectives like improving public knowledge about risks and risk management, encouraging risk reduction behavior, understanding public values and concerns, and increasing trust and credibility.     

The Nevada Initiative: A Risk Communication Fiasco

The U.S. Congress has designated Yucca Mountain, Nevada as the only potential site to be studied for the nation's first high-level nuclear waste repository. People in Nevada strongly oppose the program, managed by the U.S. Department of Energy. Survey research shows that the public believes there are great risks from a repository program, in contrast to a majority of scientists who feel the risks are acceptably small. Delays in the repository program resulting in part from public opposition in Nevada have concerned the nuclear power industry, which collects the fees for the federal repository program and believes it needs the repository as a final disposal facility for its high-level nuclear wastes. To assist the repository program, the American Nuclear Energy Council (ANEC), an industry group, sponsored a massive advertising campaign in Nevada. The campaign attempted to assure people that the risks of a repository were small and that the repository studies should proceed. The campaign failed because its managers misunderstood the issues underlying the controversy, attempted a covert manipulation of public opinion that was revealed, and most importantly, lacked the public trust that was necessary to communicate credibly about the risks of a nuclear waste facility.     

"Down and Dirty:" The Use and Abuse of Public Trust in Risk Communication

Many recent contributions to risk communication research stress the importance of the element of "trust" in the process of successful communication. This paper uses that theme in considering risk communication within the context of seeking consensus on matters of health and environmental risk controversies through stakeholder negotiation. It suggests that there are very good reasons, based on historical experience, for the parties to mistrust each other deeply in such settings. For example there is abundant evidence involving episodes in which risk promoters have concealed or ignored relevant risk data or simply have sought to advance their own interests by selective use of such data. These well-established practices compound the difficulties other stakeholders face, in all such negotiation, by virtue of the inescapable uncertainties (as well as absence of needed data) inherent in risk assessments. These factors encourage the participants to treat such negotiations as poker games in which bluffing, raising the ante, and calling the perceived bluffs of others are matters of survival. In the end we should recognize the genuine dilemmas that citizens face in trying to figure out who and what to believe in making sensible decisions among the range of risks, benefits, and tradeoffs that confront us.     

Setting a Context for Explaining Risk

Agency representatives often believe that if they could only find ways to explain risk data more clearly, communities would accept risk that scientists see as minimal, and take seriously risks scientists see as serious. While explaining the data effectively is important, agencies and industries need to place a greater priority on understanding community concerns, involving communities in risk decisions, and developing trust and credibility.     

Organizational Theory and the Stages of Risk Communication

The evolution of risk communication has been described as a series of communication strategies. This article suggests that organizational theory provides another dimension to understanding the evolution of risk communication, and that risk communication can be seen as an organizational adaptation of chemical manufacturers to external pressure. Following the tragedy in Bhopal the chemical manufacturing sector's loss of legitimacy led to destabilization of its authority and to increased uncertainty in its external environment. Risk communication was one means to increase legitimacy, thereby decreasing uncertainty and potential impact on resources. However, although risk communication may evolve from crises of legitimacy, the concept of "isomorphism"--conformance to norms within a corporate sector--predicts this need not be the case.     

The Determinants of Trust and Credibility in Environmental Risk Communication: An Empirical Study

This study examines a key component of environmental risk communication; trust and credibility. The study was conducted in two parts. In the first part, six hypotheses regarding the perceptions and determinants of trust and credibility were tested against survey data. The hypotheses were supported by the data. The most important hypothesis was that perceptions of trust and credibility are dependent on three factors: perceptions of knowledge and expertise; perceptions of openness and honesty; and perceptions of concern and care. In the second part, models were constructed with perceptions of trust and credibility as the dependent variable. The goal was to examine the data for findings with direct policy implications. One such finding was that defying a negative stereotype is key to improving perceptions of trust and credibility.     

The Causal Sequence of Risk Communication in the Parkfield Earthquake Prediction Experiment

A model of public perception and response to communication about natural hazards risk was constructed. It was estimated on data from samples of households in three communities at risk in the Parkfield earthquake prediction experiment. Estimated model parameters revealed consistent conclusions. Communicated risk information that was reinforced through additional communications and/or social cues precipitated an interactive personal search for more information; personal definitions of risk and what to do emerged; and these social constructions directed how the public responded. Perceived risk only indirectly impacted public action through information searching. This suggests that searching behavior should intervene between perception of risk and response in the theory of public risk communication.     

Customer Perceptions of Agency Risk Communication

A government agency commissioned a baseline study of how its customers view the agency's risk information. The 70% response rate to a mail survey allows analysis by subgroups representing customers'primary interests. Although this agency traditionally has been responsible for ensuring plant and animal health at the farm gate (or where imported), responses emphasized emerging customer concerns about the environment and human health. Customers think many risk communication activities are important, but that the agency is not especially effective in conducting those activities. Customers are moderately satisfied with much of the risk information they receive, although many have little contact from or interaction with the agency. Customers identified other sources they use, which suggest potentially effective channels for this agency's risk messages. The study provides a baseline for measuring change in the agency's risk communication effectiveness. It also can be a model when other organizations plan their own risk communication evaluations.     

Risk Perception and Communication Unplugged: Twenty Years of Process1

Over the past twenty years, risk communication researchers and practitioners have learned some lessons, often at considerable personal price. For the most part, the mistakes that they have made have been natural, even intelligent ones. As a result, the same pitfalls may tempt newcomers to the field. This essay offers a personal (even confessional) history of the field over this period. It identifies a series of developmental stages. Progress through the stages involves consolidating the skills needed to execute it and learning its limitations. Knowing about their existence might speed the learning process and alert one to how much there still is to learn.