From risk to vulnerability: the role of perceived adaptive capacity for the acceptance of contested infrastructure

Infrastructure projects such as repositories for nuclear waste or hazardous waste sites impose risks (in the form of potential burdens or losses) over extensive timescales. These risks change dynamically over time and so, potentially, does their management. Societies and key actors go through learning processes and subsequently may be better able to deal with related challenges. However, social scientific research on the acceptance of such projects is mainly concerned with (static) risk perception issues and does not include dynamic aspects. Adaptive capacity, which is part of the concept of vulnerability, therefore represents a promising complementing facet for this line of research. The aim of this paper is to examine the role of perceived adaptive capacity (PAC) for the acceptance of contested long-term infrastructure for the two issues of nuclear and hazardous waste. In an online experimental survey (N?=?300) examining either the acceptance of a nuclear waste repository or of a hazardous waste site, we demonstrate that (i) PAC can be separated empirically as a psychological construct from risk and benefit perception, and (ii) PAC explains a significant additional share of variance in the acceptance of both waste types beyond risk and benefit perception. Furthermore, we report what adaptation mechanisms of PAC participants expect to occur in the future. We conclude that such a dynamic perspective yields important insights in understanding individual decision-making regarding long-term infrastructure projects.     

Is the social representation of nanotechnology anchored in that of GMOs?

The use of nanotechnology (devices/materials composed of parts less than 10 nanometres) in the development of new products is rapidly expanding. Industrialists and decision-makers consider nanotechnology to be the next industrial revolution, but fear they risk the same resistance to nanotechnology that their counterparts experienced with genetically modified organisms (GMOs). Although risk perception studies have shown that perceived risk of GMOs is quite high compared to that related to nanotechnology, no study to date has explored a potential direct social representation link between the two. The present study aims to fill that gap by comparing the social representations of nanotechnology and GMOs among a population of non-experts. This study was conducted with 282 students in human and social sciences and natural sciences. Using a free association task with the inductive words ‘nanotechnology’ and ‘GMO (genetically modified organism)’, we identified the existing social representations of the two based on a structural approach. While the representation of GMOs is objectified in the field of agriculture, objectification for nanotechnology seems to still be lacking, although its possible objectification likely lies in computing and robotics. Our calculation of the rate of similarity of associative words with nanotechnology and GMOs indicated no present, direct link between their social representations. We discuss the possible evolution of the social representation of nanotechnology over time.     

Cultural attributes and risk perception: the moderating role of different types of research and development

Drawing on the grid–group culture theory, this study examines hypotheses to explain how the cultural attributes of an organization influence professionals’ perceptions of risk in the context of research and development (R&D) activities. Specifically, we explore whether two dimensions of cultural attributes – the grid dimension and the group dimension – affect organizational commitment and risk perception. We also investigate whether the impact of the cultural attributes on risk perception is mediated by organizational commitment and whether different types of R&D activities – applied research and developmental research – serve as a moderating variable on the relationships among cultural attributes, organizational commitment, and risk perception. The partial least squares method was used to analyze data collected from full-time senior researchers with over five years of experience at a large technology institute. Our findings indicate that cultural attributes influence the risk perception of R&D professionals through the mediating function of organizational commitment. Further, we found that different types of R&D activities have moderating effects on the relationship between organizational commitment and risk perception.     

Great deeds or great risks? Scientists’ social representations of nanotechnology

Nanotechnologies are becoming a larger presence in everyday life and are viewed by governments and economic actors as a key area for development. The theory of social representations suggests that specialist views eventually disseminate to shape representations among the public. Yet nanotechnologies remain relatively little known to the general public. The media emphasize potential benefits, while potential risks get less attention. The literature has not yet addressed whether representations by a well-informed population (scientists) are indeed structured in terms of the risk–benefit polarity that dominates research framing to date. We attempted a systematic assessment of how background knowledge about nanotechnology may influence experts’ perception. Study 1 delivered the first demonstration derived from a qualitative analysis confirming the existence of a polarized representation of nanotechnologies, contrasting opportunity (medical, economic, and technological) and risk. Interestingly, risk was distinguished at two levels: that associated with nanomaterial characteristics (toxicity, reactivity) and at the larger scale of impact (health, environment, legislation). Does this polarity indicate a ‘yes, but’ logic (nanotechnology carries opportunity but also risk), or two clusters of specialists (sensitive, respectively, to opportunity or to risk)? Study 2 surveyed a larger sample of experts who self-described their scientific background and role viz. nanotechnology. Role had no influence. Specialists consensually viewed that nanotechnology represents opportunity, but depending on scientific background they did not agree to the same extent that nanotechnology also constitutes a risk. Participants with a physics and chemistry background tended to represent nanotechnologies predominantly in terms of opportunities and not in terms of inherent risks or impacts. In contrast, toxicologists, life and social scientists appeared to explicitly incorporate both benefits and risks in their representation of this new technology. Environmental scientists were a more diverse group, divided between the two patterns of representation.     

The differences in perception of radiological risks: lay people versus new and experienced employees in the nuclear sector

This paper studies the differences in perception of two radiological risks – an accident at a nuclear installation and medical X-rays – between four different groups: the general population without (1) and with experience related to radiological risks (2), new employees (3) and professionally exposed people (4) in the nuclear sector. More precisely, this study determines if differences in risk perception can be explained by the level of experiences with ionizing radiation, the knowledge level about radiological risks, the confidence in authorities, the attitude towards nuclear energy, the trust in a management of nuclear installations, gender and age. The data are gathered using computer assisted personal interviews based on the SCK-CEN Barometer of the Belgian Nuclear Research Centre. The relations between risk perception and the independent variables are tested with linear regression analysis. The risk perception of both risks differs significantly between the four population groups. The professionally exposed people and the new employees in the nuclear sector have a significant higher risk perception for medical X-rays compared to the risk for an accident at a nuclear installation. For the general population without experience, it was just the opposite. The general population with experience does not have a significant difference in risk perception between the two radiological risks. Level of experiences with ionizing radiation is determined as an important variable; people have a lower perception of radiological risks when they have higher experiences with risk.     

An evidential reasoning approach to Sarbanes-Oxley mandated internal control risk assessment

In response to the enactment of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act 2002 and of the release of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) Auditing Standard No. 5, this study develops a risk-based evidential reasoning approach for assessing the effectiveness of internal controls over financial reporting (ICoFR). This approach provides a structured methodology for assessing the effectiveness of ICoFR by considering relevant factors and their interrelationships. The Dempster-Shafer theory of belief functions is utilized for representing risk.First, we develop a generic ICoFR assessment model based upon a Big 4 audit firm's approach and apply it to a real-world example. Then, based on this model, we develop a quantitative representation of various levels of ICoFR effectiveness and related risk-assessment as defined by the PCAOB and contrast these representations with levels implied by Auditing Standard No. 5. In doing so, we demonstrate the potential value of formal risk assessment models in both facilitating the assessment of risks in an individual engagement and in assessing the effects of different regulations.     

The role of numeric and statistical content on risk perception in infographics about road safety

Abstract

Numbers saturate news coverage and health and risk messaging. But as our expertise in the creation of statistical information increases, the ability to use those statistics in decision making remains frustratingly inadequate. There has been a wealth of research related to how to train people to better use the numbers they interact with on a daily basis. Far less research, however, explores the appropriate way to use numbers in communication. Two experiments explored the role of numbers in risk communication infographics related to road safety while driving. Experiment 1 found that the presence of numbers influence risk perception, but whether those numbers reflect accurate statistics or random numbers does not change their influence. Experiment 2 found that removing all statistics entirely from infographics and replacing them with linguistic gist representations of the numbers (i.e. words like ‘some’, ‘many’, ‘none’) increased risk perception even though people found the infographics to be less informative than the ones containing numbers. The results suggest that the gist representations of the numbers in the context of the infographics are equivalent regardless of their value, such that the very presence of statistics influences judgment and risk perception but not their meaning. They also suggest that people do not always realize how they are using statistical information in their judgement and decision making process.     

Collective efficacy and natural hazards: differing roles of social cohesion and task-specific efficacy in shaping risk and coping beliefs

Abstract

Previous research in non-disaster contexts has shown that the concept of collective efficacy, which is a group’s sense of its ability to achieve a specific objective, assists understanding of community readiness and households’ decisions to take preparedness actions. Collective efficacy expands the concept of social capital, which refers to social resources such as trust, norms and networks, by addressing how likely communities are to activate these resources for specific tasks. This paper empirically investigates the effect of three distinct collective efficacy components on risk perception, fear and self-efficacy regarding natural hazards in Austria. The three components have differing impacts on risk and coping beliefs: (1) Social cohesion decreases risk perception and fear but has no effect on self-efficacy; (2) Efficacy belief in social support increases self-efficacy; (3) Efficacy belief in citizen groups increases risk perception and fear. The combination of efficacy belief in social support and citizen groups seems to be most promising for stimulating protective action, as they together promote both risk and coping appraisal. However, overreliance on social support may have the undesirable effect of creating a false sense of safety among disaster-prone households. The findings demonstrate that collective efficacy provides a meaningful perspective from which to examine risk and coping beliefs but caution against treating it as an umbrella concept, given the differing effects of its components. Future studies are needed to investigate the impact of collective efficacy on other key explanatory factors of protective action, such as response efficacy or non-protective responses.     

Werbeanzeigen von Versicherungsunternehmen zur Aufklärung über Gesundheitsrisiken

Insurers offering health-related services as accident insurance, health insurance coverage or nursing insurance for instance have a legitimate interest in reducing costs of ill insured. Information about health-conscious behavior and health risks provided by advertisement may contribute this impact. In an experimental study, we analyze the effect of credibility of advertisement and independent third-party trustmark on health risk perception and health behavior intentions. Results demonstrate significant influence of credibility of advertisement on health risk perception and higher credibility for advertisement with independent trustmark. Furthermore, higher health risk perception conducts to healthier behavior intentions.     

Is it obligor or instrument that explains recovery rate: Evidence from US corporate bond

This study investigates the impacts of unobservable firm heterogeneity on modelling corporate bond recovery rates at the instrument level. Based on the recovery information over a long horizon from 1986 to 2012, we find that an obligor-varying linear factor model presents significant improvements in explaining the variations of recovery rates with a remarkably high intra-class correlation being observed. It emphasizes that the inclusion of an obligor-varying random effect term has effectively explained the unobservable firm level information shared by instruments of the same issuer and thus results in an improvement of predictive accuracy of recovery rates. The empirical results show that the latent economic cyclical effects have been well represented by firm level heterogeneity, and strong evidence is presented for the normal distributional assumption of the recovery rates. Finally, we demonstrate the choice of recovery rate models may influence portfolio risk with the obligor-varying factor model generating a more right clustered loss distribution than other regression methods on the aggregated portfolio.     

中国金融周期与横向关联:时空双维度相结合视角

宏观审慎政策关注各金融子市场在时间维度上的金融周期和空间维度上的横向关联。本文结合时间维度与空间维度视角,使用股票市场、货币市场、房地产市场以及信贷市场的数据,测算2001—2019年中国金融周期和横向关联的波动特征、作用关系与频域叠加机理。研究结果表明:时间维度金融周期与空间维度横向关联的波动趋势具有一致性。我国金融周期长度约为10.33年,横向关联波动周期的长度约为10.58年。从作用关系上看,首先,我国房地产周期达到波峰后,会对股票市场和信贷市场产生较强的溢出效应。随后,股市周期达到波峰后,会向房地产市场和信贷市场产生较强的溢出效应。最后,我国信贷市场接受股票市场和房地产市场溢出后,信贷周期会逐渐达到波峰。从频域叠加机理的角度看,我国金融子市场间横向关联的波动主要由中低频波段驱动,中低频波段横向关联的持续期在2个月以上。     

Fairness,risk and risk tolerance in the siting of a nuclear waste repository

In this paper, risk tolerance with regard to nuclear waste is investigated. It is shown that Swedish respondents did not readily accept a local high-level nuclear waste repository, contrary to claims based on polling data. The important role played in Sweden by misleading survey questions is pointed out and demonstrated on empirical data where formulations and procedures are varied. The acceptance of a local repository (measured as intention to vote in its favour in a local referendum) could not be explained well by a cost-benefit approach, neither by an individual risk perception model. Concern about the local community was an important determinant, however, and so were moral aspects. When these aspects were included in a model, about 60% of the variance of risk perception and risk acceptance was accounted for. Cultural Theory scale items, however, added virtually nothing to the explanatory power of the models. In further analyses, NIMBY respondents were identified, defined here as people who rejected a local repository in spite of having acknowledged substantial utility of nuclear power. NlMBYs constituted, however, only a small minority of all opposition to a local repository. Few respondents stated that they would accept a local repository if they were to be given financial compensation. This fact may be related to nuclear power issues being conceived as general, rather than personal, matters. Those who saw it as a politically important issue also conceived of it in general rather than personal terms.     

中小企业集合债券总体信用风险度量研究

中小企业集合债券总体信用风险既包括系统风险产生的周期性违约风险,又包括相互关联关系导致的传染性违约风险。首先通过对因素模型的改进构建模型Ⅰ,研究集合债券的周期性违约风险;在此基础上引入违约传染建立模型Ⅱ,分析违约传染对违约概率及违约相关性的影响,研究集合债券的总体信用风险。最后基于模型Ⅱ进行算例研究,得出结论：企业间的相互关联关系降低了其1次违约概率,增加了其多次违约概率即违约相关性。     

The antecedent role of personal environmental values in the relationships among trust in companies,information processing and risk perception

Trust and risk perception are important issues for industries such as petrochemical companies, typically considered ‘less trustworthy’ because of the hazards associated with their activities. In this context, individual’s trust in companies may have influence on information processing mode that individual adopts to reach a judgement such as risk perception associated with industrial hazards. We take the heuristic-systematic theory (HSM) as the model for processing information about industrial risk, with trust in companies as its antecedent and risk perception as its consequence. However, this process may be influenced by factors such as personal specific values. This paper analyses, to our knowledge for the first time, the antecedent role of personal values towards environmental issues in the HSM of information processing. The model was tested using data from interviews with 992 residents in an area of the province of Castelló (Spain) close to a petrochemical complex. Structured equation models were used to analyse the data. The results demonstrate the proposed relationships. The main contribution of this paper is the corroboration of the direct and indirect effects of personal environmental values on the variables that make up the trust in companies-HSM of information processing-risk perception sequence. Finally, we recommend that the companies of the petrochemical complex consider the frank, open and bidirectional communication with the residents as the key element to break the association among pro-environmental values, distrust in the companies and perception of the risk.     

Time series decomposition and measurement of business cycles, trends and growth cycles

A study of business cycles does not require trend estimation and elimination, but a study of growth cycles does. Major cyclical slowdowns and speedups deserve to be analyzed, but the needed time series decomposition presents difficult problems, mainly because trends and cycles influence each other. We compare cyclical movements in levels, deviations from trend, and smoothed growth rates for both the quarterly real GDP and the monthly U.S. Coincident Index—using the phase average trend (PAT). Then we compare alternative trend estimates, deterministic and stochastic, linear and nonlinear, and the corresponding series of deviations from these trends. We discuss how the resulting estimates differ for U.S. growth cycles in the post-World War II period. The results of PAT show great similarity to the results obtained with the Hodrick-Prescott, local linear trend, band-pass filtering methods.     

Risk as perceived by the German public: pervasive risks and “switching” risks

In 2001, a major project on the perception and evaluation of risks in southern Germany was conducted consisting of survey data as well as of semi‐structured interviews. With reference to the psychometric paradigm, this article analyzes public risk perception, pointing out the perceived risk semantic for nuclear energy, GM‐food, mad cow disease (BSE), crime, global climate change, mobile telephony and its radiation risks. These hazards reveal different patterns of risk perception and different levels of risk acceptability. Secondly, a comparison of qualitative and quantitative findings will be conducted: qualitative analyses indicate that the results of quantitative rating scales on the perception, evaluation and acceptance of technical and environmental hazards might be misleading since the public's focus on risks as elicited by open association stimuli relies much more on ‘everyday‐life’ and ‘pervasive’ risks than for instance on hazards emerging from new technologies. The relevance of technological risks tends to be dependent on the context: If explicitly mentioned in newscasts, in debates or listed in questionnaires memories, fears or other immediate responses become activated, yet they may be forgotten a short time later. We have called this phenomenon “switching effect” and the respective risks “switching risks”. In standardized opinion polls such ‘switching effects’ may evoke firm judgments, even if the importance in the interviewee's mental representation seems marginal.     

Slack and Cyclically Sensitive Inflation

We investigate the flattening Phillips relation by making two departures from standard specifications. First, we measure slack using real activity variables that are bandpass filtered or year-over-year changes in activity (these are similar), instead of gaps. Second, we study the components of inflation instead of the standard aggregates. We find that some inflation components have strong and stable correlations with the cyclical component of real activity; these components tend to be relatively well-measured and domestically determined. Other components, typically prices that are poorly measured or internationally determined, have weak and/or unstable correlations with cyclical activity. We construct a new inflation index, cyclically sensitive inflation, that weights the components by their joint cyclical covariation with real activity. The index has strong and stable correlations with cyclical activity and provides a real-time measure of cyclical movements in inflation.     

Perceived risk and tampering with nature

It is proposed that risk perception is partly driven by notions of what is seen as unnatural and immoral activities of modern technology, e.g. nuclear technology. The dimension of tampering with nature is found, in two large-scale survey studies of the general public and, in one case, of politicians involved in the environmental field, to be an important predictor of perceived risk. In one study, the perceived risk of nuclear waste was investigated, and in the other the perceived risk of a potential nuclear disaster of the Chernobyl kind. It was found that tampering with nature was a much stronger predictor of perceived risk than the traditional psychometric model dimensions, and that it absorbed most or all of the predictive power of these dimensions when entered in a common regression equation. Policy implications of these findings are discussed.     

Improving the Interpretation of Complex Audit Evidence: The Beneficial Role of Order Effects

A principal element of business risk (or strategic systems) auditing is the goal of evaluating the degree of concordance between management representations and expectations derived from an understanding of the business environment. Peecher et al. (2007) argue that an effective means by which auditors may achieve this goal is through a process of evidentiary triangulation. In this exploratory study, we investigate whether the order with which auditors evaluate business environment, information systems and financial statement representations evidence has the potential, as suggested by belief function theory, to improve the effectiveness with which they interpret the complex interrelationships between these three sources of evidence. Analyzing judgements made by practicing auditors in an experimental setting, our results reveal that, when faced with negative business environment evidence that is in conflict with positive information systems and financial statement representations evidence, auditors assess the risk of material misstatement to be higher when they are presented with the critically important business environment evidence last, rather than, as is traditionally the case, first. There is, however, some evidence to suggest that the positive order effects may be attenuated by the requirement to document reasons underlying the judgements made. The results raise a number of practical and theoretical issues that give direction to future research in this important area.