The Experts below are selected from a list of 122556 Experts worldwide ranked by ideXlab platform
Lennart Sjöberg - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
-
Risk Perception and Movies: A Study of Availability as a Factor in Risk Perception
Risk analysis : an official publication of the Society for Risk Analysis, 2010Co-Authors: Lennart Sjöberg, Elisabeth EngelbergAbstract:Media effects on Risk Perception have often been explained by Tversky and Kahneman's availability principle, but research has not consistently supported it. What seem like media effects based on availability may be effects of new information. In an experimental study, entertainment movies depicting dramatic Risk events were shown. They were found to produce no average effects on perceived Risks in spite of large mood effects and being perceived as credible. We found, however, evidence of idiosyncratic effects of the movies, that is, people reacted immediately after the movies with enhanced or diminished Risk beliefs. These reactions had faded after 10 days. Implications for the availability heuristic and Risk Perception are discussed.
-
Risk Perception by Politicians and the Public
Energy & Environment, 2008Co-Authors: Lennart Sjöberg, Britt-marie Drottz-sjöbergAbstract:Risk Perception by local politicians responsible for health and the environment is compared to that of the public in two large, representative samples, and to a group of nuclear waste management experts. Data were collected on many aspects of Risk Perception with an emphasis on ionizing radiation and nuclear waste issues. It was found that politicians and the public had, on the average, quite similar Risk Perceptions, which were very different from expert opinion. Politicians had difficulties in estimating what Risk Perception the public had. Demand for Risk mitigation was mostly related to the respondents' ratings of Risk, for both politicians and members of the public. Politicians apparently did not consider the public's views to any large degree in forming their policy attitudes. Politicians had less trust in industry than the public did. Both epistemic and social trust were found to be factors in perceived Risk, roughly equal in importance. The Risk Perception models also included Interfering with Nat...
-
Emotions and Risk Perception
Risk Management, 2007Co-Authors: Lennart SjöbergAbstract:The role of emotions in Risk Perception has been held to be important, based mainly on findings in applications of the Psychometric Model and the notion of an “Affect heuristic”. These conclusions are criticized because the work on “Dread” in the tradition of the Psychometric Model has been based mainly on items measuring severity of consequences. Only one emotion item was included. Furthermore, “affect” is a word denoting emotions but in the concrete applications to the “affect heuristic” studies have been made not of emotions, but of attitudes and evaluations. In the present paper, actual data on emotions are investigated and it is found that emotions do indeed play an important role in Risk Perception and related attitudes. In one study, it was found that interest in a hazard (a positive emotion) was positively correlated with perceived Risk. Interest was an important explanatory factor in models of demand for Risk mitigation. Much recent work on emotions and attitudes suggests a three-step process, where initial cognitive processing gives rise to emotions, which in turn guide the further, more elaborate, cognitive processing. The notion of the primacy of a primitive initial emotional reaction governing belief contents is rejected. Risk communication based on such a simplistic neurophysiological model is likely to fail.
-
Distal factors in Risk Perception
Journal of Risk Research, 2003Co-Authors: Lennart SjöbergAbstract:This is an empirical and quantitative study of the validity of four kinds of distal explanatory factors in Risk Perception. In an initial study, personality constructs (Five Factor Model, Myers-Briggs Indicator of Jungian constructs and Risk attitudes) were related to Risk Perception data (26 hazards). A relationship was found between emotional stability and Risk Perception, but none with Jungian constructs. One Risk attitude dimension, 'Macho' Risk willingness, was (negatively) related to demand for governmental Risk mitigation. In a second study with a different sample, indices were constructed to measure the four World Views according to Cultural Theory (CT) as well as Group/Grid dimensions, New Age beliefs and the New Environmental Paradigm (NEP) dimensions of Dunlap et al . Risk Perception data were obtained with regard to 37 hazards, both general and personal Risk. The respondents were a large representative sample of the Swedish population. Only about 5% of the variance of perceived Risk was accoun...
-
Political decisions and public Risk Perception
Reliability Engineering & System Safety, 2001Co-Authors: Lennart SjöbergAbstract:Abstract Should the public's Risk Perception be an input into political and administrative decision making? It is clear that it does have an influence, but perhaps not to the extent of explaining all, or even most, of the tremendous inconsistencies in the allocation of resources for Risk mitigation. Risk Perception models could be of help to understand such phenomena, but contemporary models of Risk Perception have been misleading and their weaknesses are discussed. Similarly, experts' Risk Perception has been asserted to be very different from that of the public but that is argued here to be a mistaken opinion. Should we let the experts run Risk policy? Several arguments against this idea are put forward here, the most important being that the whole issue is one of democracy. Those who are unhappy about the decisions made by the government can always argue their case and maybe gain political power to change things. This is as true of Risk policy as it is of everything else.
Peter M. Wiedemann - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
-
RF EMF Risk Perception Revisited: Is the Focus on Concern Sufficient for Risk Perception Studies?
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 2017Co-Authors: Peter M. Wiedemann, Frederik Freudenstein, Christoph Böhmert, Joe Wiart, Rodney J CroftAbstract:An implicit assumption of Risk Perception studies is that concerns expressed in questionnaires reflect concerns in everyday life. The aim of the present study is to check this assumption, i.e., the extrapolability of Risk Perceptions expressed in a survey, to Risk Perceptions in everyday life. To that end, Risk Perceptions were measured by a multidimensional approach. In addition to the traditional focus on measuring the magnitude of Risk Perceptions, the thematic relevance (how often people think about a Risk issue) and the discursive relevance (how often people think about or discuss a Risk issue) of Risk Perceptions were also collected. Taking into account this extended view of Risk Perception, an online survey was conducted in six European countries with 2454 respondents, referring to radio frequency electromagnetic field (RF EMF) Risk potentials from base stations, and access points, such as WiFi routers and cell phones. The findings reveal that the present study’s multidimensional approach to measuring Risk Perception provides a more differentiated understanding of RF EMF Risk Perception. High levels of concerns expressed in questionnaires do not automatically imply that these concerns are thematically relevant in everyday life. We use thematic relevance to distinguish between enduringly concerned (high concern according to both questionnaire and thematic relevance) and not enduringly concerned participants (high concern according to questionnaire but no thematic relevance). Furthermore, we provide data for the empirical value of this distinction: Compared to other participants, enduringly concerned subjects consider radio frequency electromagnetic field exposure to a greater extent as a moral and affective issue. They also see themselves as highly exposed to radio frequency electromagnetic fields. However, despite these differences, subjects with high levels of thematic relevance are nevertheless sensitive to exposure reduction as a means for improving the acceptance of base stations in their neighborhood. This underlines the value of exposure reduction for the acceptance of radio frequency electromagnetic field communication technologies.
-
Exposure Knowledge and Risk Perception of RF EMF.
Frontiers in Public Health, 2015Co-Authors: Frederik Freudenstein, Peter M. Wiedemann, Nadège VarsierAbstract:The presented study is part of the EU Project LEXNET (Low EMF Exposure Future Networks), which deals among other things with the issue of whether a reduction of the radiofrequency (RF) electro-magnetic fields (EMF) exposure will result in more acceptance of wireless communication networks in the public sphere. We assume that the effects of any reduction of EMF exposure will depend on the subjective link between exposure Perception and Risk Perception. Therefore we evaluated respondents’ Risk Perceptions of different RF EMF sources and their subjective knowledge about various exposure characteristics with regard to their impact on potential health Risks. The results show that participants are more concerned about base stations than about all other RF EMF sources. Concerning the subjective exposure knowledge the results suggest that people have a quite appropriate impact model. The question how RF EMF Risk Perception is actually affected by the knowledge about the various exposure characteristics was tested in a linear regression analysis. The regression indicates that these features - except distance - do influence people’s general RF EMF Risk Perceptions. In addition, we analyzed the effect of the quality of exposure knowledge on RF EMF Risk Perception of various sources. The results show a tendency that better exposure knowledge leads to higher Risk Perception, especially for mobile phones. The study provides empirical support for models of the relationships between exposure Perception and Risk Perception. It is not the aim to extrapolate these findings to the whole population because the samples are not exactly representative for the general public in the participating countries.
-
Framing effects on Risk Perception of nanotechnology
Public Understanding of Science, 2008Co-Authors: Holger Schütz, Peter M. WiedemannAbstract:How do people judge nanotechnology Risks that are completely unfamiliar to them? Drawing on results of previous studies on framing and Risk Perception, two hypotheses about potential influences on nanotechnology Risk Perception were examined in an experimental study: 1) Risk Perception of nanotechnology is influenced by its benefit Perception. 2) Risk Perception of nanotechnology is influenced by the context in which nanotechnology is embedded, specifically by the characteristics of the enterprises that profit from nanotechnology: large multinational enterprises versus small and medium-sized enterprises. In contrast to findings for other new technologies, e.g. biotechnology, the different types of benefit did not affect Risk Perceptions in our study. However, we found that characterizing the enterprises as large multinational versus small or medium-sized leads to differences in Risk Perception. One can speculate that when personal knowledge about a technology is lacking, people use more familiar aspects from the social context as cues for their Risk evaluation.
Maria Elisabetta Zanolin - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
-
A score for measuring health Risk Perception in environmental surveys.
Science of The Total Environment, 2015Co-Authors: Alessandro Marcon, Giang Nguyen, Marta Rava, Marco Braggion, Mario Grassi, Maria Elisabetta ZanolinAbstract:Abstract Background In environmental surveys, Risk Perception may be a source of bias when information on health outcomes is reported using questionnaires. Using the data from a survey carried out in the largest chipboard industrial district in Italy (Viadana, Mantova), we devised a score of health Risk Perception and described its determinants in an adult population. Methods In 2006, 3697 parents of children were administered a questionnaire that included ratings on 7 environmental issues. Items dimensionality was studied by factor analysis. After testing equidistance across response options by homogeneity analysis, a Risk Perception score was devised by summing up item ratings. Results Factor analysis identified one latent factor, which we interpreted as health Risk Perception, that explained 65.4% of the variance of five items retained after scaling. The scale (range 0–10, mean ± SD 9.3 ± 1.9) had a good internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha 0.87). Most subjects (80.6%) expressed maximum Risk Perception (score = 10). Italian mothers showed significantly higher Risk Perception than foreign fathers. Risk Perception was higher for parents of young children, and for older parents with a higher education, than for their counterparts. Actual distance to major roads was not associated with the score, while self-reported intense traffic and frequent air refreshing at home predicted higher Risk Perception. Conclusions When investigating health effects of environmental hazards using questionnaires, care should be taken to reduce the possibility of awareness bias at the stage of study planning and data analysis. Including appropriate items in study questionnaires can be useful to derive a measure of health Risk Perception, which can help to identify confounding of association estimates by Risk Perception.
-
A score for measuring health Risk Perception in environmental surveys.
The Science of the total environment, 2015Co-Authors: Alessandro Marcon, Giang Nguyen, Marta Rava, Marco Braggion, Mario Grassi, Maria Elisabetta ZanolinAbstract:In environmental surveys, Risk Perception may be a source of bias when information on health outcomes is reported using questionnaires. Using the data from a survey carried out in the largest chipboard industrial district in Italy (Viadana, Mantova), we devised a score of health Risk Perception and described its determinants in an adult population. In 2006, 3697 parents of children were administered a questionnaire that included ratings on 7 environmental issues. Items dimensionality was studied by factor analysis. After testing equidistance across response options by homogeneity analysis, a Risk Perception score was devised by summing up item ratings. Factor analysis identified one latent factor, which we interpreted as health Risk Perception, that explained 65.4% of the variance of five items retained after scaling. The scale (range 0-10, mean ± SD 9.3 ± 1.9) had a good internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha 0.87). Most subjects (80.6%) expressed maximum Risk Perception (score = 10). Italian mothers showed significantly higher Risk Perception than foreign fathers. Risk Perception was higher for parents of young children, and for older parents with a higher education, than for their counterparts. Actual distance to major roads was not associated with the score, while self-reported intense traffic and frequent air refreshing at home predicted higher Risk Perception. When investigating health effects of environmental hazards using questionnaires, care should be taken to reduce the possibility of awareness bias at the stage of study planning and data analysis. Including appropriate items in study questionnaires can be useful to derive a measure of health Risk Perception, which can help to identify confounding of association estimates by Risk Perception. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Fan Linlin - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
-
Theoretical Construction of College Students' Risk Perception in Physical Activity
Journal of Sports Sciences, 2011Co-Authors: Fan LinlinAbstract:This paper made study on the college students' Risk Perception in physical activity and built the college student's Risk Perception model to perform a complete analysis of the college student's Risk Perception in physical activity.It concluded that the college student's Risk Perception in physical activity had several dimensions including severity,knowledge,controllability,voluntariness,especially tragedy and common-dread.Based on the analysis of the influence factors of Risk Perception in physical activity,combining with the characteristics of college students,it was showed that the college student's Risk Perception in physical activity was affected by endogenous factors and exogenous factors.Finally,the research presented the concept model of the college student's Risk Perception in physical activity and completed the theory establishment of the college student's Risk Perception in physical activity.
Xiaodan Zhang - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
-
Modeling of Vehicles Merging Movement at Unsignalized Intersections Considering Drivers’ Risk Perception:
Transportation Research Record, 2017Co-Authors: Miaomiao Liu, Yongsheng Chen, Xiaodan ZhangAbstract:In the dynamic interaction of a driver-vehicle-environment system, Risk Perception of drivers changes dynamically, having significant impacts on driving behavior and vehicles movement. In China, because there is less construction of stop signs, as well as limited regulation of driving courtesy, traffic operation and safety issues at unsignalized intersections require harder concern. Thus, in this study, focus was on Risk Perception of drivers at unsignalized intersections in China and then analysis of vehicles movement with consideration of drivers’ Risk Perception. A total of 150 typical merging cases were selected at an unsignalized intersection in Kunming City. On the basis of cognitive psychology theory and an adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system, quantitative models of drivers’ Risk Perception were established. Drivers’ acceptable Risk Perception levels were identified by using a self-developed data analysis method. On the basis of game theory, the relationship among the quantitative value of driver...
