Risk Perceptions

Paper Summary:

The paper examines the role risk perceptions play in shaping citizens' policy preferences on three issues involving types of potential harms: air pollution, crime, and hazardous waste storage and disposal. The paper uses cases studies to illustrate that risk perceptions are relevant to the public's views on environmental issues. The analysis shows that crime, as a personal safety/social policy issue, and air pollution as an environmental regulatory issue are extremely similar in terms of determinants of policy preferences. Hazardous waste storage and disposal is quite dissimilar. The paper concludes that that it is evident that most individuals do see the role of government as inclusive of a duty to protect the citizenry from such hazardous materials and environments.

Outline:
Introduction
Specific Case Studies Regarding Waste Management Issues
Specific Relationships between Risk Management and Policy
Risk in Individual Policy Preferences
Conclusion

From the Paper:

"Individuals' perceptions of risks are relevant to the policy process. The degree of risk individuals assign to activities (e.g., cigarette smoking) or technologies (e.g., genetic modification of foods) involving possible harm helps shape their attitudes toward public policy on such issues. Extensive literatures explain both the underlying causes of risk perception per se and the determinants of assigning risk to particular activities, situations, or technologies. But relatively few studies account for how those risk perceptions specifically influence preferences toward government policies designed to manage potential public health, personal safety, or ecological hazards."

Sample of Sources Used:

• American Association for Public Opinion Research. 2004. Standard Definitions: Final Dispositions of Case Codes and Outcome Rates for Surveys. Lenexa, KS: AAPOR.
• Barke, Richard, and Hank Jenkins-Smith. 1993. "Politics and Scientific Expertise: Scientists, Risk Perception, and Nuclear Waste Policy." Risk Analysis 13 (4): 425-39.
• Barrington, Lowell W., and Erik Herron. 2001. "Understanding Public Opinion in Post-Communist States: The Effects of Statistical Assumptions on Substantive Results." Europe-Asia Studies 53 (4): 573-94.
• Bourke, Lisa. 1994. "Economic Attitudes and Responses to Siting Hazardous Waste Facilities in Rural Utah." Rural Sociology 59 (3): 485-96.
• Burger, J., O. Myers, C. S. Boring, C. Dixon, J. C. Jeitner, J. Leonard, C. Lord, M. McMahon, R. Ramos, S. Shukla, and M. Gochfeld. 2003. "Perceptual Indicators of Environmental Health, Future Land Use, and Stewardship." Environmental Monitoring and Assessment 89 (3): 285-303.

More papers on Risk Perceptions:

• Article Review # 105314 : "Effects of Risk Perception on Risk-Taking"
• Essay # 66322 : "Risk Perception and Dangers"
• Research Paper # 149879 : "Risk Management Perceptions and Strategies"

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