The Influence of Feelings While Driving Regular Cars on the Perception and Acceptance of Self‐Driving Cars

Self‐driving vehicles will affect the future of transportation, but factors that underlie perception and acceptance of self‐driving cars are yet unclear. Research on feelings as information and the affect heuristic has suggested that feelings are an important source of information, especially in situations of complexity and uncertainty. In this study (N = 1,484), we investigated how feelings related to traditional driving affect risk perception, benefit perception, and trust related to self‐driving cars as well as people's acceptance of the technology. Due to limited experiences with and knowledge of self‐driving cars, we expected that feelings related to a similar experience, namely, driving regular cars, would influence judgments of self‐driving cars. Our results support this assumption. While positive feelings of enjoyment predicted higher benefit perception and trust, negative affect predicted higher risk and higher benefit perception of self‐driving cars. Feelings of control were inversely related to risk and benefit perception, which is in line with research on the affect heuristic. Furthermore, negative affect was an important source of information for judgments of use and acceptance. Interest in using a self‐driving car was also predicted by lower risk perception, higher benefit perception, and higher levels of trust in the technology. Although people's individual experiences with advanced vehicle technologies and knowledge were associated with perceptions and acceptance, many simply have never been exposed to the technology and know little about it. In the absence of this experience or knowledge, all that is left is the knowledge, experience, and feelings they have related to regular driving.     

Beauty is in the in-group of the beholded: Intergroup differences in the perceived attractiveness of leaders

Physical attractiveness is most commonly presumed to be an exogenous characteristic that influences people's feelings, perceptions, and behavior across myriad types of relationships. We investigate the opposite prediction in which feelings toward other people influence the perceptions of others' attractiveness. Focusing specifically on subordinates' perceptions of leaders of in-groups and out-groups, we examine whether group membership moderates familiarity in relation to ratings of physical attractiveness. Studies 1 and 2 show that subordinates rate the leaders of their in-groups as significantly more physically attractive than comparably familiar out-group leaders. Our findings have relevance for understanding the interactive roles of physical attractiveness within contemporary organizational environments and help to account for variance in interpersonal perceptions on the basis of group membership. In contrast with research traditions that treat physical attractiveness as a static trait, our findings highlight the importance of group membership as a lens for perceiving familiar leaders' physical attractiveness.     

Perceptions of Risk and Vulnerability Following Exposure to a Major Natural Disaster: The Calgary Flood of 2013

Many studies have examined the general public's flood risk perceptions in the aftermath of local and regional flooding. However, relatively few studies have focused on large‐scale events that affect tens of thousands of people within an urban center. Similarly, in spite of previous research on flood risks, unresolved questions persist regarding the variables that might influence perceptions of risk and vulnerability, along with management preferences. In light of the opportunities presented by these knowledge gaps, the research reported here examined public perceptions of flood risk and vulnerability, and management preferences, within the city of Calgary in the aftermath of extensive flooding in 2013. Our findings, which come from an online survey of residents, reveal that direct experience with flooding is not a differentiating factor for risk perceptions when comparing evacuees with nonevacuees who might all experience future risks. However, we do find that judgments about vulnerability—as a function of how people perceive physical distance—do differ according to one's evacuation experience. Our results also indicate that concern about climate change is an important predictor of flood risk perceptions, as is trust in government risk managers. In terms of mitigation preferences, our results reveal differences in support for large infrastructure projects based on whether respondents feel they might actually benefit from them.     

Perception and Communication of Flood Risks: A Systematic Review of Empirical Research

Flood hazards are the most common and destructive of all natural disasters. For decades, experts have been examining how flood losses can be mitigated. Just as in other risk domains, the study of risk perception and risk communication has gained increasing interest in flood risk management. Because of this research growth, a review of the state of the art in this domain is believed necessary. The review comprises 57 empirically based peer‐reviewed articles on flood risk perception and communication from the Web of Science and Scopus databases. The characteristics of these articles are listed in a comprehensive table, presenting research design, research variables, and key findings. From this review, it follows that the majority of studies are of exploratory nature and have not applied any of the theoretical frameworks that are available in social science research. Consequently, a methodological standardization in measuring and analyzing people's flood risk perceptions and their adaptive behaviors is hardly present. This heterogeneity leads to difficulties in comparing results among studies. It is also shown that theoretical and empirical studies on flood risk communication are nearly nonexistent. The article concludes with a summary on methodological issues in the fields of flood‐risk perception and flood‐risk communication and proposes an agenda for future research.     

System justification in organizational contexts: How a Motivated preference for the status quo can affect organizational attitudes and behaviors

In this chapter, we put forth the premise that people's motivated tendency to justify and defend their external systems has important, and largely unexplored, implications for the field of organizational behavior. Drawing on recent theoretical and empirical work emerging from System Justification Theory (Jost & Banaji, 1994), we propose that people's desire to view prevailing structural arrangements in a positive light may uniquely contribute to our understanding of the psychology of people in organizational settings. We begin by specifically highlighting System Justification Theory's implications for: organizational change, employee citizenship behaviors, and integration of a diverse workforce. We then review empirical work on the situations in which people's system-justification motive is likely to be particularly pronounced and discuss how these situations may manifest in organizational contexts. Following this, we describe several streams of research on the consequences of the system-justification motive, with a focus on the implications of these findings for organizational members’ perceptions, attitudes, and behaviors in the workplace.     

Public Perceptions of the Risks and Benefits of Technology1

This study attempted to verify and extend previous research on people's perceptions of the risks and benefits of technology and their judgments concerning the acceptability of technology safety regulations. The study addressed several limitations of prior work, in that: (1) it was the first “expressed-preference” study to collect data from large, representative samples of Americans; (2) the research design made “person,” rather than “technology,” the unit of statistical analysis; and (3) the study employed an expanded set of independent variables, including three qualitative benefit characteristics. The results confirmed several major conclusions of prior expressed-preference research, the most important being that members of the public tend to define “risks,”“benefits,” and “acceptability” in a complex, multidimensional manner; and that their definitions differ significantly from those used by professional risk-managers and other technical experts in quantitative assessments of risk and acceptability. The results also indicated that people's stances toward technology regulation tend to cut across traditional sociodemographic lines.     

Product Quality Risk Perceptions and Decisions: Contaminated Pet Food and Lead‐Painted Toys

In the context of the recent recalls of contaminated pet food and lead‐painted toys in the United States, we examine patterns of risk perceptions and decisions when facing consumer product‐caused quality risks. Two approaches were used to explore risk perceptions of the product recalls. In the first approach, we elicited judged probabilities and found that people appear to have greatly overestimated the actual risks for both product scenarios. In the second approach, we applied the psychometric paradigm to examine risk perception dimensions concerning these two specific products through factor analysis. There was a similar risk perception pattern for both products: they are seen as unknown risks and are relatively not dread risks. This pattern was also similar to what prior research found for lead paint. Further, we studied people's potential actions to deal with the recalls of these two products. Several factors were found to be significant predictors of respondents’ cautious actions for both product scenarios. Policy considerations regarding product quality risks are discussed. For example, risk communicators could reframe information messages to prompt people to consider total risks packed together from different causes, even when the risk message has been initiated due to a specific recall event.     

You Have Been Framed! How Antecedents of Information Need Mediate the Effects of Risk Communication Messages

This study investigates the processes that mediate the effects of framing flood risks on people's information needs. Insight into the effects of risk frames is important for developing balanced risk communication that explains both risks and benefits of living near water. The research was inspired by the risk information seeking and processing model and related models. In a web‐based survey, respondents (n = 1,457) were randomly assigned to one of three communication frames or a control frame (experimental conditions). Each frame identically explained flood risk and additionally refined the message by emphasizing climate change, the quality of flood risk management, or the amenities of living near water. We tested the extent to which risk perceptions, trust, and affective responses mediate the framing effects on information need. As expected, the frames on average resulted in higher information need than the control frame. Attempts to lower fear appeal by stressing safety or amenities instead of climate change were marginally successful, a phenomenon that is known as a “negativity bias.” Framing effects were mediated by negative attributes (risk perception and negative affect) but not by positive attributes (trust and positive affect). This finding calls for theoretical refinement. Practically, communication messages will be more effective when they stimulate risk perceptions and evoke negative affect. However, arousal of fear may have unwanted side effects. For instance, fear arousal could lead to lower levels of trust in risk management among citizens. Regular monitoring of citizens’ attitudes is important to prevent extreme levels of distrust or cynicism.     

How a Nuclear Power Plant Accident Influences Acceptance of Nuclear Power: Results of a Longitudinal Study Before and After the Fukushima Disaster

Major nuclear accidents, such as the recent accident in Fukushima, Japan, have been shown to decrease the public's acceptance of nuclear power. However, little is known about how a serious accident affects people's acceptance of nuclear power and the determinants of acceptance. We conducted a longitudinal study (N= 790) in Switzerland: one survey was done five months before and one directly after the accident in Fukushima. We assessed acceptance, perceived risks, perceived benefits, and trust related to nuclear power stations. In our model, we assumed that both benefit and risk perceptions determine acceptance of nuclear power. We further hypothesized that trust influences benefit and risk perceptions and that trust before a disaster relates to trust after a disaster. Results showed that the acceptance and perceptions of nuclear power as well as its trust were more negative after the accident. In our model, perceived benefits and risks determined the acceptance of nuclear power stations both before and after Fukushima. Trust had strong effects on perceived benefits and risks, at both times. People's trust before Fukushima strongly influenced their trust after the accident. In addition, perceived benefits before Fukushima correlated with perceived benefits after the accident. Thus, the nuclear accident did not seem to have changed the relations between the determinants of acceptance. Even after a severe accident, the public may still consider the benefits as relevant, and trust remains important for determining their risk and benefit perceptions. A discussion of the benefits of nuclear power seems most likely to affect the public's acceptance of nuclear power, even after a nuclear accident.     

The Protective Action Decision Model: Theoretical Modifications and Additional Evidence

The Protective Action Decision Model (PADM) is a multistage model that is based on findings from research on people's responses to environmental hazards and disasters. The PADM integrates the processing of information derived from social and environmental cues with messages that social sources transmit through communication channels to those at risk. The PADM identifies three critical predecision processes (reception, attention, and comprehension of warnings or exposure, attention, and interpretation of environmental/social cues)—that precede all further processing. The revised model identifies three core perceptions—threat perceptions, protective action perceptions, and stakeholder perceptions—that form the basis for decisions about how to respond to an imminent or long‐term threat. The outcome of the protective action decision‐making process, together with situational facilitators and impediments, produces a behavioral response. In addition to describing the revised model and the research on which it is based, this article describes three applications (development of risk communication programs, evacuation modeling, and adoption of long‐term hazard adjustments) and identifies some of the research needed to address unresolved issues.     

Spatially Representing Vulnerability to Extreme Rain Events Using Midwestern Farmers’ Objective and Perceived Attributes of Adaptive Capacity

Potential climate‐change‐related impacts to agriculture in the upper Midwest pose serious economic and ecological risks to the U.S. and the global economy. On a local level, farmers are at the forefront of responding to the impacts of climate change. Hence, it is important to understand how farmers and their farm operations may be more or less vulnerable to changes in the climate. A vulnerability index is a tool commonly used by researchers and practitioners to represent the geographical distribution of vulnerability in response to global change. Most vulnerability assessments measure objective adaptive capacity using secondary data collected by governmental agencies. However, other scholarship on human behavior has noted that sociocultural and cognitive factors, such as risk perceptions and perceived capacity, are consequential for modulating people's actual vulnerability. Thus, traditional assessments can potentially overlook people's subjective perceptions of changes in climate and extreme weather events and the extent to which people feel prepared to take necessary steps to cope with and respond to the negative effects of climate change. This article addresses this knowledge gap by: (1) incorporating perceived adaptive capacity into a vulnerability assessment; (2) using spatial smoothing to aggregate individual‐level vulnerabilities to the county level; and (3) evaluating the relationships among different dimensions of adaptive capacity to examine whether perceived capacity should be integrated into vulnerability assessments. The result suggests that vulnerability assessments that rely only on objective measures might miss important sociocognitive dimensions of capacity. Vulnerability indices and maps presented in this article can inform engagement strategies for improving environmental sustainability in the region.     

Explicating Experience: Development of a Valid Scale of Past Hazard Experience for Tornadoes

People's past experiences with a hazard theoretically influence how they approach future risks. Yet, past hazard experience has been conceptualized and measured in wide‐ranging, often simplistic, ways, resulting in mixed findings about its relationship with risk perception. This study develops a scale of past hazard experiences, in the context of tornadoes, that is content and construct valid. A conceptual definition was developed, a set of items were created to measure one's most memorable and multiple tornado experiences, and the measures were evaluated through two surveys of the public who reside in tornado‐prone areas. Four dimensions emerged of people's most memorable experience, reflecting their awareness of the tornado risk that day, their personalization of the risk, the intrusive impacts on them personally, and impacts experienced vicariously through others. Two dimensions emerged of people's multiple experiences, reflecting common types of communication received and negative emotional responses. These six dimensions are novel in that they capture people's experience across the timeline of a hazard as well as intangible experiences that are both direct and indirect. The six tornado experience dimensions were correlated with tornado risk perceptions measured as cognitive‐affective and as perceived probability of consequences. The varied experience–risk perception results suggest that it is important to understand the nuances of these concepts and their relationships. This study provides a foundation for future work to continue explicating past hazard experience, across different risk contexts, and for understanding its effect on risk assessment and responses.     

Interpersonal Amplification of Risk? Citizen Discussions and Their Impact on Perceptions of Risks and Benefits of a Biological Research Facility

Much risk communication research has demonstrated how mass media can influence individual risk perceptions, but lacks a comprehensive conceptual understanding of another key channel of communication: interpersonal discussion. Using the social amplification of risk as a theoretical framework, we consider the potential for discussions to function as amplification stations. We explore this possibility using data from a public opinion survey of residents living in potential locations for a new biological research facility in the United States. Controlling for a variety of key information variables, our results show that two dimensions of discussion—frequency and valence—have impacts on residents’ perceptions of the facility's benefits and its risks. We also explore the possibility that an individual's overall attitude moderates the effect of discussion on their perceptions of risks and benefits. Our results demonstrate the potential for discussions to operate as amplifiers or attenuators of perceptions of both risks and benefits.     

Ethical leadership supports safety voice by increasing risk perception and reducing ethical ambiguity: Evidence from the COVID-19 pandemic

Misconduct by business and political leaders during the pandemic is feared to have impacted people's adherence to protective measures that would help to safeguard against the spread of COVID-19. Addressing this concern, this article theorizes and tests a model linking ethical leadership with workplace risk communication—a practice referred to as ‘safety voice’ in the research literature. Our study, conducted with 511 employees from UK companies, revealed that ethical leadership is positively associated with greater intention to engage in safety voice regarding COVID-19. We also find that this association is mediated by relations with the perceived health risk of COVID-19 and ambiguity about ethical decision making in the workplace. These findings therefore underscore the importance of good ethical conduct by leaders for ensuring that health and safety risks are well understood and communicated effectively by organizational members particularly during crises. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of our study and highlight further opportunities for future research to address the ethical dimensions of leadership, risk management, and organizational risk communication.     

The Effects of Expectation Disconfirmation on Appraisal,Affect, and Behavioral Intentions

People's risk perceptions can have powerful effects on their outcomes, yet little is known about how people respond to risk information that disconfirms a prior expectation. We experimentally examined the affective, cognitive, and behavioral consequences of expectation disconfirmation in the context of risk perceptions. Participants were randomly assigned and then prompted toward either a high or low personal risk estimate regarding a fictitious health threat. All participants then received the same risk feedback, which presented either a negative disconfirmation experience (i.e., worse than expected) in the high‐risk estimate condition or a positive disconfirmation experience (i.e., better than expected) in the low‐risk estimate condition. Participants who experienced the negative disconfirmation reported stronger intentions to prevent the threat in the future compared to participants who experienced the positive disconfirmation. This effect was mediated by both disappointment about the risk feedback and perceptions of the severity of the threat. These findings have implications for risk communication, suggesting that the provision of objective risk information may improve or diminish the likelihood of behavior change depending on people's initial expectations and their emotional and cognitive reactions to the information.     

Claiming more than equality: Should leaders ask for forgiveness?

In organizations, leaders are often paid more than lower-level employees. Social dilemma research also shows that leaders feel entitled to earn more, and because of this, are more inclined to contribute less than an equal share to a public good, which may damage the collective. In two experiments, the social dilemma context is used to examine how group members react when either a leader or a follower violates the equality norm. Moreover, we demonstrate how asking for forgiveness sometimes mitigates people's reactions to equality norm violations. Results show that asking for forgiveness attenuates negative emotions, retribution, and non-cooperation—but more so if followers, relative to leaders, violated equality. In fact, leaders are less likely to be seen as even violating norms, suggesting that group members perceive leaders to be entitled.     

Beyond a Simple Case of Black and White: Searching for the White Male Effect in the African-American Community

Prior research focusing on risk perceptions has led to the observation that well‐educated and politically conservative white males tend to systematically perceive lower levels of risk from a wide range of hazards when compared to other members of society (e.g., white women, nonwhite women and men). While this “white male effect (WME)” is quite striking given that many policymakers fall into this group, a byproduct of this finding is that it deflects attention from the heterogeneity, in terms of people's concerns about risks, that exists in African‐American and other minority communities. The research reported here set out to explore this heterogeneity by asking a simple question: Can a phenomenon similar to the WME be found in the African‐American community? It can, and its implications for research and practice in risk management are discussed.     

Public Perception of Climate Change: The Importance of Knowledge and Cultural Worldviews

The importance of knowledge for lay people's climate change concerns has been questioned in recent years, as it had been suggested that cultural values are stronger predictors of concern about climate change than knowledge. Studies that simultaneously measured knowledge related to climate change and cultural values have, however, been missing. We conducted a mail survey in the German‐speaking part of Switzerland (N = 1,065). Results suggested that cultural worldviews and climate‐related knowledge were significantly related with people's concern about climate change. Also, cultural worldviews and climate‐relevant knowledge appeared important for people's willingness to change behaviors and to accept climate change policies. In addition, different types of knowledge were found to have different impacts on people's concern about climate change, their willingness to change behaviors, and their acceptance of policies about climate change. Specifically, causal knowledge significantly increased concern about climate change and willingness to support climate‐friendly policies. We therefore concluded that risk communication should focus on causal knowledge, provided this knowledge does not threaten cultural values.     

Risk Perception and Risk Talk: The Case of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Radiation Risk

Individuals’ perceptions and their interpersonal communication about a risk event, or risk talk, can play a significant role in the formation of societal responses to the risk event. As they formulate their risk opinions and speak to others, risk information can circulate through their social networks and contribute to the construction of their risk information environment. In the present study, Japanese citizens’ risk perception and risk talk were examined in the context of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear radiation risk. We hypothesized and found that the risk information environment and risk literacy (i.e., competencies to understand and use risk information) interact to influence their risk perception and risk talk. In particular, risk literacy tends to stabilize people's risk perceptions and their risk communications. Nevertheless, there were some subtle differences between risk perception and communication, suggesting the importance of further examination of interpersonal risk communication and its role in the societal responses to risk events.     

How managers’ risk perceptions affect their willingness to blame advisors as scapegoats

Managers spend considerable amounts of corporate money to hire consultants. The research proposes two potential benefits of consultants' advice: increasing decision accuracy and sharing responsibility with the advisor. In contrast to previous research, which has predominantly focused on factors influencing decisional accuracy, this paper evaluates the sharing of responsibility in the form of using an advisor as a scapegoat. We conduct an online experiment with 175 managers from German-speaking countries in an investment setting. We find that the presence of a potential scapegoat positively affects advice utilization in an economic boom but negatively affects such utilization in an economic crisis due to managers' varying risk perceptions. Managers' risk perceptions are the main drivers of scapegoating as a form of managerial blame avoiding decision-making. We contribute to management research and highlight managers’ opportunistic motives behind consulting (costly) advice.