Risk perception mechanisms

Risk perception mechanisms

Risk perception mechanisms lay behind that fact that subjective risk perception deviates from objective risks. Citizens always assess risks, threats and uncertainties on a subjective and individual basis. To a certain extent, gaps between felt and factual risks/security are normal phenomena.

Factors that affect citizens perception of risk have been largely identified. Risk research, independent of the subject matter in question, sees citizens’ assessment of risks and threats considerably dependent on knowledge of precedents, frequency and extent of risk experience as well as perceived immediate effects on themselves.

Factors affecting individual and social perception of risks

Mechanisms of citizens’ risk perception thus are variable and rather complex. Traditionally, statistically high rated threats to life and health (car accidents, food poisoning, cancer and others) are not particularly feared, however, spectacular hazards, even at low vulnerabilities are unproportionally perceived to be high risks. More specifically, fear-related and knowledge related factors can be distinguished.

Fear-related factors

• Risks causing pain and death are generally feared (e.g. shark attack vs. heart attack);
• Controllable risks tend to be feared less than uncontrollable risks (such as air trips, urban criminality, terrorism, food contamination);
• Disasters with global impacts are feared more than those with regional impacts (nuclear war vs. conventional war);
• Lethal risks are feared more (air crashes vs. car accidents);
• Risks equal to all population groups are feared less than risks effecting particular sub-groups (especially children);
• Collective risks are feared more than individual risks;
• Risks exceeding life spans are more alarming;
• Risks that are hard to prevent cause greater fear;
• Decreasing risks (e.g. due to mitigation) are feared less;
• Involuntary risks are feared more;
• Direct affection (e.g. 9/11) raises fear of risk;
• Avoidable risks cause less fear (e.g. due to medical progress such as AIDS)

Knowledge related factors

• Invisible Risks (smoke vs. genetic engineering);
• Risks with unknown degree of exposure;
• Risks having delayed effects;
• New/unknown risks;
• Scientifically implausible risks.

Perception of risk and affecting factors

What people perceive, is real for them; so their behaviour will be influenced not by the actual level of security, but of their perception of it.

Factors that affect the individual and social perception of risk:

• Voluntariness: Risks from activities considered to be involuntary or imposed (for example, exposure to chemicals and radiation from a terrorist attack using chemical weapons or dirty bombs) are judged to be greater, and are therefore less readily accepted, than risks from voluntary activities (such as smoking, sunbathing or mountain climbing).
• Controllability: Risks from activities considered to be under the control of others (such as the release of nerve gas in a coordinated series of terrorist attacks) are judged to be greater, and are less readily accepted than those from activities considered to be under the control of the individual (such as driving an automobile or riding a bicycle).
• Familiarity: Risks resulting from activities viewed as unfamiliar (such as travel leading to exposure to exotic-sounding infectious diseases) are judged greater than risks resulting from activities viewed as familiar (such as household work).
• Fairness: Risks from activities believed to be unfair or to involve unfair processes (such as inequities in the location of medical facilities) are judged greater than risks from “fair” activities (such as widespread vaccinations).
• Benefits: Risks from activities that seem to have unclear, questionable or diffused personal or economic benefits (for example, proximity to waste-disposal facilities) are judged to be greater than risks resulting from activities with clear benefits (for example, employment or automobile driving).
• Catastrophic potential: Risks from activities associated with potentially high numbers of deaths and injuries grouped in time and space (for example, major terrorist attacks using biological, chemical or nuclear weapons) are judged to be greater than risks from activities that cause deaths and injuries scattered (often apparently randomly) in time and space (for example, household accidents).
• Understanding: Poorly understood risks (such as the health effects of long-term exposure to low doses of toxic chemicals or radiation) are judged to be greater than risks that are well understood or self-explanatory (such as pedestrian accidents or slipping on ice).
• Uncertainty: Risks that are relatively unknown or highly uncertain (such as those associated with genetic engineering) are judged to be greater than risks from activities that appear to be relatively well known to science (such as actuarial risk data related to automobile accidents).
• Effects on children: Activities that appear to put children specifically at risk (such as drinking milk contaminated with radiation or toxic chemicals or pregnant women exposed to radiation or toxic chemicals) are judged to carry greater risks than more-general activities (such as employment).
• Victim identity: Risks from activities that produce identifiable victims (such as an individual worker exposed to high levels of toxic chemicals or radiation, or a child who falls down a well) are judged to be greater than risks from activities that produce statistical victim profiles (such as automobile accidents).
• Dread: Risks from activities that evoke fear, terror or anxiety due to the horrific consequences of exposure (for example to HIV, radiation sickness, cancer, Ebola or smallpox) are judged to be greater than risks from activities that do not arouse such feelings or emotions regarding exposure (for example to common colds or household accidents).
• Trust: Risks from activities associated with individuals, institutions or organizations lacking in trust and credibility (for example, chemical companies or nuclear power plants with poor safety records) are judged to be greater than risks from activities associated with trustworthy and credible sources (for example, regulatory agencies that achieve high levels of compliance from regulated industries).
• Media attention: Risks from activities that generate considerable media attention (such as anthrax attacks using the postal system or accidents at nuclear power plants) are judged to be greater than risks from activities that generate little media attention (such as occupational accidents).
• Accident history: Activities with a history of major accidents or incidents, or frequent minor accidents or incidents (such as leaks from waste-disposal facilities) are judged to carry greater risks than activities with little or no such history (such as recombinant DNA experimentation).
• Reversibility: The risks of potentially irreversible adverse effects (such as birth defects from exposure to a toxic substance or radiation) are judged to be greater than risks considered to be reversible (for example, sports injuries).
• Personal stake: Activities viewed as placing people or their families personally and directly at risk (such as living near a waste-disposal site) are judged to carry greater risks than activities that appear to pose no direct or personal threat (such as the disposal of waste in remote areas).
• Ethical and moral status: Risks from activities believed to be ethically objectionable or morally wrong (such as providing diluted or outdated vaccines for an economically distressed community) are judged to be greater than the risks from ethically neutral activities (such as the side-effects of medication).
• Human versus natural origin: Risks generated by human action, failure or incompetence (such as negligence, inadequate safeguards or operator error) are judged to be greater than risks believed to be caused by nature or “acts of god” (such as exposure to geological radon or cosmic rays).”

Social risk perception has long since been acknowledged as a significant component in integrated risk assessment. Hence, it also forms an essential part of comprehensive security information for consideration in urban planning. Results from urban planning decisions can influence citizen risk perception including the distraction of risk perception for more objective risk levels; and vice versa, citizens’ risk perception can result in societal demands on urban planning.

Felt and factual risks/security

Risk researchers have long been acknowledging risk perception to be seriously influenced from various subjective factors and to deviate from objective risks. Factors that affect citizens perception of risk have been largely identified.

Felt security has also been found to depend on personal control/efficacy beliefs: People usually accept considerably higher risk if they feel themselves in a position to decide about it; they are less prone to accept unconditional collective risk, e.g. as communicated by public authorities. At the same time, psychological analyses have found the effect of “overconfidence” (optimistic self-overestimation). This effect describes a systematic cognitive error in assessing risks (namely assessing them too low) that are amenable to people’s own influence, such as car driving, mountaineering but also walking alone in the dark, a typical (street) crime-related public opinion poll indicator of felt security. When risky contexts, that are not amenable to human change, the risk tends to be ignored, as risk ignorance in earthquake-prone areas has shown from ancient Pompeii in the Roman Empire to Los Angeles and San Francisco. In the case of natural risks, or risks that citizens perceive as out of their ability to change, we can expect citizens to discount or even discharge risk by compensating social contexts, leading to a gap between felt and factual security.

Risk communication

Effective risk communication and sensitization and adequate risk management can help to correct negative effects from public risk (mis-)perception and hazard over- and underestimation, which is also essential for the legitimacy of urban planning. Risk management by authorities has to be coherent with societal risk perception and views. This makes the issue a cultural factor. Effects of changing risk characteristics to societal reactions must be comprehended, and approaches and perspectives should be understood to be influenced by changes in social and political systems. Risk management must react to such phenomena. Urban planning thus can be seen to form a part of the risk and crises management cycle.

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