Studies of risk perception examine the judgements people make when they are asked to characterize and evaluate hazardous activities and technologies. This research aims to aid risk analysis and policy-making by providing a basis for understanding and anticipating public responses to hazards and improving the communication of risk information among lay people, technical experts, and decision-makers. This work assumes that those who promote and regulate health and safety need to understand how people think about and respond to risk. Without such understanding, well-intended policies may be ineffective.

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/236/4799/280.full.pdf

Perception of risk.

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Qualitative research for education: An introduction to theories and methods

In 1974 an article appeared in Science magazine with the dry-sounding title “Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases” by a pair of psychologists who were not well known outside their discipline of decision theory. In it Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman introduced the world to Prospect Theory, which mapped out how humans actually behave when faced with decisions about gains and losses, in contrast to how economists assumed that people behave. Prospect Theory turned Economics on its head by demonstrating through a series of ingenious experiments that people are much more concerned with losses than they are with gains, and that framing a choice from one perspective or the other will result in decisions that are exactly the opposite of each other, even if the outcomes are monetarily the same. Prospect Theory led cognitive psychology in a new direction that began to uncover other human biases in thinking that are probably not learned but are part of our brain’s wiring.

Thinking fast and slow.

Global environmental change and sustainability science increasingly recognize the need to address the consequences of changes taking place in the structure and function of the biosphere. These changes raise questions such as: Who and what are vulnerable to the multiple environmental changes underway, and where? Research demonstrates that vulnerability is registered not by exposure to hazards (perturbations and stresses) alone but also resides in the sensitivity and resilience of the system experiencing such hazards. This recognition requires revisions and enlargements in the basic design of vulnerability assessments, including the capacity to treat coupled human–environment systems and those linkages within and without the systems that affect their vulnerability. A vulnerability framework for the assessment of coupled human–environment systems is presented.

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A framework for vulnerability analysis in sustainability science

Human institutions—ways of organizing activities—affect the resilience of the environment. Locally evolved institutional arrangements governed by stable communities and buffered from outside forces have sustained resources successfully for centuries, although they often fail when rapid change occurs. Ideal conditions for governance are increasingly rare. Critical problems, such as transboundary pollution, tropical deforestation, and climate change, are at larger scales and involve nonlocal influences. Promising strategies for addressing these problems include dialogue among interested parties, officials, and scientists; complex, redundant, and layered institutions; a mix of institutional types; and designs that facilitate experimentation, learning, and change.

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The Struggle to Govern the Commons

One of the most perplexing problems in risk analysis is why some relatively minor risks or risk events, as assessed by technical experts, often elicit strong public concerns and result in substantial impacts upon society and economy. This article sets forth a conceptual framework that seeks to link systematically the technical assessment of risk with psychological, sociological, and cultural perspectives of risk perception and risk-related behavior. The main thesis is that hazards interact with psychological, social, institutional, and cultural processes in ways that may amplify or attenuate public responses to the risk or risk event. A structural description of the social amplification of risk is now possible. Amplification occurs at two stages: in the transfer of information about the risk, and in the response mechanisms of society. Signals about risk are processed by individual and social amplification stations, including the scientist who communicates the risk assessment, the news media, cultural groups, interpersonal networks, and others. Key steps of amplifications can be identified at each stage. The amplified risk leads to behavioral responses, which, in turn, result in secondary impacts. Models are presented that portray the elements and linkages in the proposed conceptual framework.

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The Social Amplification of Risk: A Conceptual Framework

This article reviews the main insights from selected literature on risk perception, particularly in connection with natural hazards. It includes numerous case studies on perception and social behavior dealing with floods, droughts, earthquakes, volcano eruptions, wild fires, and landslides. The review reveals that personal experience of a natural hazard and trust--or lack of trust--in authorities and experts have the most substantial impact on risk perception. Cultural and individual factors such as media coverage, age, gender, education, income, social status, and others do not play such an important role but act as mediators or amplifiers of the main causal connections between experience, trust, perception, and preparedness to take protective actions. When analyzing the factors of experience and trust on risk perception and on the likeliness of individuals to take preparedness action, the review found that a risk perception paradox exists in that it is assumed that high risk perception will lead to personal preparedness and, in the next step, to risk mitigation behavior. However, this is not necessarily true. In fact, the opposite can occur if individuals with high risk perception still choose not to personally prepare themselves in the face of a natural hazard. Therefore, based on the results of the review, this article offers three explanations suggesting why this paradox might occur. These findings have implications for future risk governance and communication as well as for the willingness of individuals to invest in risk preparedness or risk mitigation actions.

The Risk Perception Paradox—Implications for Governance and Communication of Natural Hazards

�Risk Governance is a tour de force. Every risk manager, every risk analyst, every risk researcher must read this book - it is the demarcation point for all further advances in risk policy and risk research. Renn provides authoritative guidance on how to manage risks based on a definitive synthesis of the research literature. The skill with which he builds practical recommendations from solid science is unprecedented.�
Thomas Dietz, Director, Environmental Science and Policy Program, Michigan State University, USA

�A masterpiece of new knowledge and wisdom with illustrative examples of tested applications to realworld cases. The book is recommendable also to interested students in different disciplines as a timely textbook on 'risk beyond risk'.�
Norio Okada, Full Professor and Director at the Disaster Prevention Research Institute (DPRI), Kyoto University, Japan

�There are classic environmental works such as The Tragedy of the Commons by Hardin, Risk Society by Beck, The Theory of Communicative Action by Habermas, and the seminal volumes by Ostrom on governing the commons. Renn�s book fits right into this series of important milestones of environmental studies.�
Jochen Jaeger, Professor at Concordia University, Montreal, Canada

�Risk Governance provides a valuable survey of the whole field of risk and demonstrates how scientific, economic, political and civil society actors can participate in inclusive risk governance.�
Jobst Conrad, Senior Scientist, Social Science Research Center Berlin, Germany

�Renn offers a remarkably fair-minded and systematic approach to bringing together the diverse fields that have something to say about 'risk'. Risk Governance moves us along the path from the noisy, formative stage of thinking about risk to one with a stronger empirical, theoretical, and analytical foundation.�
Baruch Fischhoff, PhD, Howard Heinz University Professor, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, USA

'I cannot describe how impressed I am at the breadth and coherence of Renn's career's work! Written with remarkable clarity and minimal technical jargon... [this] should be required reading in risk courses!'
John Graham, former director of the Harvard Risk Center and former deputy director of the Office of Budget and Management of the Unites States Administration

This book, for the first time, brings together and updates the groundbreaking work of renowned risk theorist and researcher Ortwin Renn, integrating the major disciplinary concepts of risk in the social, engineering and natural sciences. The book opens with the context of risk handling before flowing through the core topics of assessment, evaluation, perception, management and communication, culminating in a look at the transition from risk management to risk governance and a glimpse at a new understanding of risk in (post)modern societies.

Risk Governance: Coping with Uncertainty in a Complex World

Foreword Preface: Democracy and Science T Dietz 1 A Need for Discourse on Citizen Participation: Objectives and Structure of the Book O Renn, T Webler, P Wiedemann 2 A Brief Primer on Participation: Philosophy and Practice T Webler, O Renn 3 'Right' Discourse in Citizen Participation: An Evaluative Yardstick T Webler 4 The Redemption of Citizen Advisory Committees: A Perspective from Critical Theory F M Lynn, J D Kartez 5 Citizens' Advisory Committee as a Model For Public Participation: A Multiple-Criteria Evaluation A Vari 6 Planning Cells: A Gate to 'Fractal' Mediation P C Dienel, O Renn 7 Review of 'Planning Cells': Problems of Legitimation H-J Seiler 8 Citizens' Juries: One Solution for Difficult Environmental Questions N Crosby 9 The Citizens' Jury as Model of Public Participation: A Critical Evaluation A Armour 10 The Varresbecker Bach Participatory Process: The Model of Citizen Initiatives F Claus 11 The Varresbecker Bach Participatory Process: An Evaluation J Linnerooth- Bayer 12 Regulatory Negotiation as a Form of Public Participation D Fiorino 13 Regulatory Negotiation as Citizen Participation: A Critique S G Hadden 14 Mediation M Baughman 15 Environmental Mediation: Insights into the Microcosm and Outlooks for Political Implications W Nothdurft 16 Voluntary Siting of Noxious Facilities: The Role of Compensation H Kunreuther 17 Voluntary Siting of Noxious Facilities: Additional Thoughts and Empirical Evidence F Oberholzer-Gee, B S Frey 18 Direct Participation in Macro-Issues: A Multiple Group Approach An Analysis and Critique of the Dutch National Debate on Energy Policy, Fairness, Competence, and Beyond C J H Midden 19 The Dutch Study Groups Revisited J L Mumpower 20 The Pursuit of Fair and Competent Citizen Participation O Renn, T Webler, P Wiedemann Appendix: Biographies of Authors Index

Fairness and competence in citizen participation : evaluating models for environmental discourse

Our concept of nine risk evaluation criteria, six risk classes, a decision tree, and three management categories was developed to improve the effectiveness, efficiency, and political feasibility of risk management procedures. The main task of risk evaluation and management is to develop adequate tools for dealing with the problems of complexity, uncertainty. and ambiguity. Based on the characteristics of different risk types and these three major problems, we distinguished three types of management--risk-based, precaution-based, and discourse-based strategies. The risk-based strategy--is the common solution to risk problems. Once the probabilities and their corresponding damage potentials are calculated, risk managers are required to set priorities according to the severity of the risk, which may be operationalized as a linear combination of damage and probability or as a weighted combination thereof. Within our new risk classification, the two central components have been augmented with other physical and social criteria that still demand risk-based strategies as long as uncertainty is low and ambiguity absent. Risk-based strategies are best solutions to problems of complexity and some components of uncertainty, for example, variation among individuals. If the two most important risk criteria, probability of occurrence and extent of damage, are relatively well known and little uncertainty is left, the traditional risk-based approach seems reasonable. If uncertainty plays a large role, in particular, indeterminacy or lack of knowledge, the risk-based approach becomes counterproductive. Judging the relative severity of risks on the basis of uncertain parameters does not make much sense. Under these circumstances, management strategies belonging to the precautionary management style are required. The precautionary approach has been the basis for much of the European environmental and health protection legislation and regulation. Our own approach to risk management has been guided by the proposition that any conceptualization of the precautionary principle should be (1) in line with established methods of scientific risk assessments, (2) consistent and discriminatory (avoiding arbitrary results) when it comes to prioritization, and (3) at the same time, specific with respect to precautionary measures, such as ALARA or BACT, or the strategy of containing risks in time and space. This suggestion does, however, entail a major problem: looking only to the uncertainties does not provide risk managers with a clue about where to set priorities for risk reduction. Risks vary in their degree of remaining uncertainties. How can one judge the severity of a situation when the potential damage and its probability are unknown or contested? In this dilemma, we advise risk managers to use additional criteria of hazardousness, such as "ubiquity versibility," and "pervasiveness over time," as proxies for judging severity. Our approach also distinguishes clearly between uncertainty and ambiguity. Uncertainty refers to a situation of being unclear about factual statements; ambiguity to a situation of contested views about the desirability or severity of a given hazard. Uncertainty can be resolved in principle by more cognitive advances (with the exception of indeterminacy). ambiguity only by discourse. Discursive procedures include legal deliberations as well as novel participatory approaches. In addition, discursive methods of planning and conflict resolution can be used. If ambiguities are associated with a risk problem, it is not enough to demonstrate that risk regulators are open to public concerns and address the issues that many people wish them to take care ot The process of risk evaluation itself needs to be open to public input and new forms of deliberation. We have recommended a tested set of deliberative processes that are, at least in principle, capable of resolving ambiguities in risk debates (for a review, see Renn, Webler, & Wiedemaun. 1995). Deliberative processes are needed, however, for ail three types of management. Risk-based management relies on epistemiological, uncertainty-based management on reflective, and discourse-based management on participatory discourse forms. These three types of discourse could be labeled as an analytic-deliberative procedure for risk evaluation and management. We see the advantage of a deliberative style of regulation and management in a dynamic balance between procedure and outcome. Procedure should not have priority over the outcome; outcome should not have priority over the procedure. An intelligent combination of both can elaborate the required prerequisites of democratic deliberation and its substantial outcomes to enhance the legitimacy of political decisions (Guttman & Thompson, 1996; Bohman, 1997. 1998).

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Ortwin Renn

Papers

The Social Amplification of Risk: A Conceptual Framework

The Risk Perception Paradox—Implications for Governance and Communication of Natural Hazards

Risk Governance: Coping with Uncertainty in a Complex World

Fairness and competence in citizen participation : evaluating models for environmental discourse

A new approach to risk evaluation and management: risk-based, precaution-based, and discourse-based strategies.