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 Perceptions of Offshore Workers on UK Oil and Gas Platforms

Knowledge of the workforce's risk perceptions and attitudes to safety is necessary for the development of a safety culture, where each person accepts responsibility for working safely. The ACSNI Human Factors report stresses the importance of assessing workforce perceptions of risk to achieve a proper safety culture. Risk perception research has been criticized for insufficient analysis of the causal relationships between risk factors and perceived risk. The present study reports some of the factors which predicted risk perception in a sample of 622 employees from six UKCS offshore oil installations who completed a 15-section questionnaire. This paper focuses on the accuracy of workers' risk perceptions and what underlying factors predict the perception of personal risk from both major and minor hazards.     

Risk Perceptions,General Environmental Beliefs,and Willingness to Address Climate Change

The research reported here examines the relationship between risk perceptions and willingness to address climate change. The data are a national sample of 1225 mail surveys that include measures of risk perceptions and knowledge tied to climate change, support for voluntary and government actions to address the problem, general environmental beliefs, and demographic variables. Risk perceptions matter in predicting behavioral intentions. Risk perceptions are not a surrogate for general environmental beliefs, but have their own power to account for behavioral intentions. There are four secondary conclusions. First, behavioral intentions regarding climate change are complex and intriguing. People are neither nonbelievers who will take no initiatives themselves and oppose all government efforts, nor are they believers who promise both to make personal efforts and to vote for every government proposal that promises to address climate change. Second, there are separate demographic sources for voluntary actions compared with voting intentions. Third, recognizing the causes of global warming is a powerful predictor of behavioral intentions independent from believing that climate change will happen and have bad consequences. Finally, the success of the risk perception variables to account for behavioral intentions should encourage greater attention to risk perceptions as independent variables. Risk perceptions and knowledge, however, share the stage with general environmental beliefs and demographic characteristics. Although related, risk perceptions, knowledge, and general environmental beliefs are somewhat independent predictors of behavioral intentions.     

Testing the Cultural Theory of Risk in France

Cultural Theory, as developed by Mary Douglas, argues that differing risk perceptions can be explained by reference to four distinct cultural biases: hierarchy, egalitarianism, individualism, and fatalism. This paper presents empirical results from a quantitative survey based on a questionnaire devised by Karl Dake to measure these cultural biases. A large representative sample (N = 1022) was used to test this instrument in the French social context. Correlations between cultural biases and perceptions of 20 social and environmental risks were examined. These correlations were very weak, but were statistically significant: cultural biases explained 6%, at most, of the variance in risk perceptions. Standard sociodemographic variables were also weakly related to risk perceptions (especially gender, social class, and education), and cultural biases and sociodemographic variables were themselves inter correlated (especially with age, social class, and political outlook). The authors compare these results with surveys conducted in other countries using the same instrument and conclude that new methods, more qualitative and contextual, still need to be developed to investigate the cultural dimensions of risk perceptions. The paper also discusses relationships between perceptions of personal and residual risk, and between perceived risk and demand for additional safety measures. These three dimensions were generally closely related, but interesting differences were observed for some risk issues.     

Perceived Risk, Dread, and Benefits

This paper uses regression techniques to take a second look at a classic risk-perception data set originally collected by Paul Slovic, Sarah Lichtenstein, and Baruch Fischhoff. As discussed in earlier studies, the attributes expected mortality, effects on future generations, immediacy , and catastrophic potential all significantly affect risk ratings. However, we find that perceived risk and dread show different regression patterns; most importantly, only perceived risk ratings correlate with expected mortality. In addition, average risk ratings are found to be significantly affected by perceived individual benefits, which suggests that perceptions of risk are net rather than gross indicators of harm.     

Risk Perceptions of Hong Kongese vs. Americans

Hong Kong students rated the risk of 30 hazards and quantified a subset on six risk characteristics; data are compared to a prior study of American students. Hong Kongese rated 10 hazards substantially higher and five hazards substantially lower than Americans, and factor structures indicated differences on five hazards. Possible explanations for these differences are discussed.     

Historical Application of a Social Amplification of Risk Model: Economic Impacts of Risk Events at Nuclear Weapons Facilities

Public perception of risk is being cited as a documented reason to rethink a very contentious congressionally mandated process for siting interim storage and permanent disposal facilities for high-level radioactive waste. Rigorous survey research has shown that the public holds intense, negative images of "nuclear" and "radioactive" technologies, activities, and facilities. Potential host states and opponents claim that these negative images, coupled with an amplification of negative risk events, will potentially stigmatize the area surrounding such facilities and result in significant economic losses. At issue is whether a supporting social amplification of risk model is applicable to communities hosting facilities that are part of the U.S. Department of Energy Nuclear Weapons Complex. An initial assessment of high-profile discrete and cumulative key negative risk events at such nuclear facilities does not validate that there has been stigmatization or substantial social and economic consequences in the host areas. Before any changes to major national policy are implemented, additional research is required to determine if the nearby public's "pragmatic logic," based on practical knowledge and experience, attenuates the link between public opinion and demographic and economic behaviors.     

Effects of the Chernobyl Accident on Public Perceptions of Nuclear Plant Accident Risks

Assessments of public perceptions of the characteristics of a nuclear power plant accident and affective responses to its likelihood were conducted 5 months before and 1 month after the Chernobyl accident. Analyses of data from 69 residents of southwestern Washington showed significant test-retest correlations for only 10 of 18 variables--accident likelihood, three measures of impact characteristics, three measures of affective reactions, and hazard knowledge by governmental sources. Of these variables, only two had significant changes in mean ratings; frequency of thought and frequency of discussion about a nearby nuclear power plant both increased. While there were significant changes only for two personal consequences (expectations of cancer and genetic effects), both of these decreased. The results of this study indicate that more attention should be given to assessing the stability of risk perceptions over time. Moreover, the data demonstrate that experience with a major accident can actually decrease rather than increase perceptions of threat.     

Knowledge-Based Representations of Risk Beliefs

Beliefs about risks associated with two risk agents, AIDS and toxic waste, are modeled using knowledge-based methods and elicited from subjects via interactive computer technology. A concept net is developed to organize subject responses concerning the consequences of the risk agents. It is found that death and adverse personal emotional and sociological consequences are most associated with AIDS. Toxic waste is most associated with environmental problems. These consequence profiles are quite dissimilar, although past work in risk perception would have judged the risk agents as being quite similar. Subjects frequently used causal semantics to represent their beliefs and "% of time" instead of "probability" to represent likelihoods. The news media is the most prevalent source of risk information although experiences of acquaintances appear more credible. The results suggest that "broadly based risk" communication may be ineffective because people differ in their conceptual representation of risk beliefs. In general, the knowledge-based approach to risk perception representation has great potential to increase our understanding of important risk topics.     

Socioeconomic Determinants of Health- and Food Safety-Related Risk Perceptions

Individual and societal perceptions of food-related health risks are multidimensional and complex. Social, political, psychological, and economic factors interact with technological factors and affect perceptions in complex ways. Previous research found that the significant determinants of risk perceptions include socioeconomic and behavioral variables. Most of these past results are based on two-way comparisons and factor analysis. The objective of this study was to analyze the significance of socioeconomic determinants of risk perceptions concerning health and food safety. A multivariate approach was used and the results were compared with earlier bivariate results to determine which socioeconomic predictors were robust across methods. There were two major findings in this study. The first was that the results in the multivariate models were generally consistent with earlier bivariate analysis. That is, variables such as household income, number of children, gender, age, and voting preferences were strong predictors of an individual's risk perceptions. The second result was that the gender of the respondent was the only variable found to be robust across all three classes of health and food safety issues across two time periods.     

Methodological Approaches to Assessing Risk Perceptions Associated with Food-Related Hazards

The psychometric approach developed by Slovic and his co-workers has been effectively used to assess risk perceptions associated with different food-related hazards. However, further examination (using questionnaire data and partial correlation techniques) has indicated that technological hazards are highly differentiated from lifestyle hazards, in terms of both hazard control and knowledge about the hazard. Optimistic bias was also seen to vary between hazards. Further research has focused on a particular hazard, genetic engineering. Risk perceptions associated with genetic engineering are underpinned by ethical concern and questions relating to perceived need for the technology, as well as perceptions of risk or harm. However, increasing the specificity of hazard stimuli was found to alter the factor structure of underlying risk perceptions. The utility of preference mapping procedures in determining individual differences in trust in risk regulators is also discussed.     

Determinants of Risk Perceptions of a Hazardous Waste Site

A before-stimulus-after quasi-experimental design is used to assess the factors relating to risk perceptions of a hazardous waste site. First, a pretest obtains measures of attitudes and beliefs about hazardous waste and waste sites. Second, a detailed hypothetical "Superfund" scenario, including a complex cleanup plan, is introduced. Finally, indices of health risk estimates, trust, knowledge, and other pertinent beliefs are obtained. Levels of concern, both before and after cleanup, are the dependent variables. Independent variables include risk management options, health risk estimates, trust, and five sociodemographic characteristics. Concern is extremely high prior to cleanup and moderately high after cleanup. Concern is a clear function of health risk estimates. Toxic chemicals from waste sites are viewed as a major cause of multiple health problems, especially cancers. Accurate health risk estimates moderate fears and are linked to levels of education. Education, however, does not explain concern. Trust is a major factor explaining concern and health risk estimates. The implications of these findings for risk communication is discussed.     

One Agency's Use of Risk Assessment and Risk Communication1

Few organizations have the courage to evaluate their own use of risk assessment (identifying hazards and estimating their probability and magnitude) and risk communication (interacting with internal and external stakeholder groups about risks). The USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) wants to enhance its overall risk analysis process for managing a wide range of risks to animals, plants, and human health. We gathered survey data for a baseline of APHIS professionals’ understanding and use of risk assessment and risk communication. APHIS professionals spend a surprisingly large share of their time communicating about risks. They perceive that risk estimates influence decisions, but that risk estimates should have more influence. Respondents reported little opposition to APHIS risk management decisions, and little use of channels such as USDA Extension Service for disseminating risk messages. Substantial variance across responses is explained mostly by differences in the roles of the 11 work units (now 10) within the agency. Location also contributes to the variance. Demographic variables seem less important.     

Public Reliance on Risk Communication Channels in the Wake of a Cryptosporidium Outbreak

In the spring of 1993, about 39% of Milwaukee-area residents suffered through a nationally publicized illness brought about by cryptosporidium, a parasite that had infested the metropolitan drinking water supply. Our study, based on a telephone survey of 610 local adult residents, indicates that worry about becoming ill in the future with cryptosporidiosis relates more strongly and consistently to public reliance on, and use of, media for cryptosporidium information than do a range of risk perception and experience variables. We propose that more studies should take an audience-centered approach to understanding risk communication.     

A Hint of Risk: Tradeoffs Between Quantitative and Qualitative Risk Factors

Risk-perception research plays an active role in discussions of risk-management alternatives. However, little guidance is provided regarding how public concerns should be weighed against other sources of cost and benefits. This paper reports the results of two experiments that measure tradeoffs among cost (in dollars), a quantitative risk measure (number of deaths or injuries), and several qualitative characteristics associated with perceived risk. Most subjects were willing to make the requested trade. However, the perceived risk information led others to reject the proposed technology.     

Perceptions of stress in British ambulance personnel

This paper reports upon an investigative study of stress in the Ambulance Service. The aims of the research were in part methodological and in part substantive. Methodologically, the study sought to validate as measurable constructs the perceptions of sources of stress reported by ambulance staff in response to questionnaire items. Substantively, it sought to identify these possible sources of stress and to measure the relationship between their perceived importance and such moderating variables as personality characteristics, length of service, and urban or rural location of operation and rank. Both aspects of the study are reported.     

居民旅游影响感知的模糊综合评价

为研究旅游对旅游目的地的影响,将模糊综合评价的方法应用到居民旅游影响感知的研究之中,设计居民旅游影响感知的评价指标体系,采用层次分析法确定指标权重,经过聚集各指标模糊矩阵和去模糊的过程,对居民的旅游感知进行测量,并以九寨沟居民对旅游影响的感知为例对该方法给予说明。     

Gaining Competitive Advantages: Analyzing the Gap between Expectations and Perceptions of Service Quality

Universities have obligations to fulfill the needs of two customers –students and industry. Students must be intellectually prepared to meet the challenges of a highly competitive global environment. One approach in meeting this challenge is to focus on `Service Quality.' The purpose of this paper is to review the relevant research literature and theorize several propositions about SERVQUAL in the higher educational environment. The research considers the gap between expected services and perceived services and how these dimensions of SERVQUAL may be utilized to improve service quality and customer satisfaction.     

基于风险的企业战略控制系统

本文从分析战略风险的形成以及战略风险类型出发,指出了预期战略与应急战略的风险产生主要是由相应的环境因素和风险压力的结合导致的。依据此逻辑,为防止预期战略和应急战略的风险,需要从组织外部和内部视角建立相应的控制机制,最终组成企业完整的战略控制系统(TOEM模型)。最后,为使战略控制系统在实践中切实发挥效果,企业要采取一定的措施,使战略控制系统得以实施、维护和更新。