Fear and anger: antecedents and consequences of emotional responses to mobile communication

Many people fear that exposure to mobile phone base stations leads to severe health effects. In addition to those fears, many citizens are unsatisfied or even angry about prevailing base station site-selection procedures. In the present study, it was investigated how these emotions, i.e. fear and anger, determine risk and benefit perceptions and the acceptance of mobile communication. Using structural equation modeling, we found that benefit perception and the acceptance of mobile phone base stations were primarily determined by anger. Risk perception, in contrast was influenced by both emotions. In addition, controllability and fairness emerged as important cognitive appraisals, or antecedents, of fear and anger, while certainty was not related to these emotions. In sum, our findings highlight that fear and anger have specific influences on risk, benefit, and acceptance of mobile communication. Furthermore, the study provides an in-depth understanding of the antecedents that lead to emotional responses within the context of mobile communication. Implications for risk communication will be derived.     

The impact of specific information provision on base station siting preferences

When it comes to the new siting of a mobile communication base station in one’s neighbourhood, some people react with rejection because they fear health consequences from the emitted high‐frequency radiation. Most people would prefer to site base stations outside residential areas, but from a public health perspective, this may result in even more radiation for the phoning population. Therefore, authorities are interested in improving the current base station siting processes. The question arises whether specific knowledge enhancement would influence base station siting preferences or whether affective or emotional components (due to the scientific uncertainties involved) would overrule the influence of such attempts. To answer this question, an experimental study with a convenience sample of Swiss citizens (N = 228) was conducted. Participants were confronted with one of three texts: a neutral text (control group), an information booklet about mobile communication and an emotionally charged newspaper article that reported a conflict about the siting of a new base station. After reading the text, participants filled out a questionnaire about their perception of mobile communication and their base station siting preferences. Reading the information booklet increased participants’ knowledge and led to some perceptual changes of base stations and mobile phones. Importantly, participants reading the booklet were able to transfer their knowledge to a base station siting task and found locations that would emit less radiation for the phoning population. Implications and limitations of these results are discussed.     

From risk to the government of uncertainty: the case of mobile telephony

Confronted with complex and wicked issues, public authorities turn to science and expertise to provide answers that will help reduce the level of uncertainty that characterizes these issues. Yet, the paper argues that more often than not, it is the application of a risk framework to a given issue that fosters uncertainty, not the other way round. Hence, the more authorities and experts attempt to apply a risk approach to an issue, the more they encourage the production of uncertainty. Taking mobile telephony as a case in point, the paper then goes on to show that to reduce uncertainties, authorities in some countries have recently experimented with new forms of knowledge in the process of expertise; paradoxically, this may raise in a first moment the general level of uncertainty, but it may also provide in the longer term more robust knowledge. The larger aim of the paper is to expand conceptions of uncertainty commonly used in risk governance.     

Risk perception of mobile communication: a mental models approach

Some lay people confronted with a new base station project fear serious health consequences from the high‐frequency radiation, while experts consider exposure under the current international standards as unproblematic. These conflictive estimations may be attributed to the different mental models of lay people and experts. Less is known about lay people’s knowledge in regard to mobile communication and their intuitive understanding of the associated health risks. An adaptation of the ‘Mental Models Approach’ was used to reveal lay people’s beliefs about mobile communication and to learn more about lay people’s information requirements, potential knowledge gaps, and misconceptions. Through the means of open interviews with Swiss experts (N = 16), lay people (N = 16), and base station opponents (N = 15), different mental models were constructed and evaluated. Comparisons between the expert and the lay groups showed several qualitative differences in all identified knowledge domains. Knowledge gaps in regard to changing exposure magnitudes due to the interaction patterns of cell phones and base stations as well as misconceptions about regulation issues and scientific processes were found in both lay groups. In addition, lack of trust in responsible actors and disaffection with base station location processes were mentioned. The reported qualitative insights may be useful for the improvement of further risk communication tools.     

Mobile phone masts,social rationalities and risk: negotiating lay perspectives on technological hazards

This paper examines the responses of 37 participants in six focus groups to media representations of the health risks associated with mobile phone masts (‘base stations’) in the light of theoretical debates concerning non‐expert understandings of risks (variously characterised as ‘lay rationality’, lay epidemiology’, popular epidemiology’, ‘public knowledges’, ‘social rationality’ and ‘intuitive risk judgements’). In particular, the study discusses the extent to which two particular manifestations of such understandings – non‐mediated contextual and personal knowledges (‘multiple information sources’), and risk comparisons made between mobile phone masts and a variety of other perceived health risks – are prominent in respondents’ discursive constructions of risk. The paper suggests that analyses of risk responses such as these should differentiate clearly between classes of risks, and avoid suggestions that any particular type of risk response can be unproblematically mapped onto other risk scenarios.     

The siting of a research centre on clean coal combustion and CO2 capture in Spain: Some notes on the relationship between trust and lack of public information

This paper aims to gain a better understanding of the role played by trust in the context of scarcity of public information, vis‐à‐vis the installation of a Centre for Investigation in Advanced Technologies (Centro de Investigación de Tecnologías Avanzadas, CITA) to be located in a coal‐rich region of Spain. Data from semi‐structured interviews (n = 15), a questionnaire survey (n = 400) and focus group sessions (2) are drawn together to reveal how the local community perceives the proposed CITA scheme, and how this relates to the level of trust placed in the project promoters. Results illustrate how a lay community gives meaning to an unknown technological project, trying to place it within its appropriate economic, social and political context, and relating it to prior knowledge and experiences. Results also show that, in contrast to certain risk communication theories, the public is able to place trust in a technological activity and their promoters despite a general lack of knowledge on either.     

Voluntary Contributions with Uncertainty: The Environmental Quality

This article presents a model in which production causes pollution that diminishes the welfare of its agents. Each agent is concerned with the quality of its environment and may voluntary contribute to improve it by financing depollution technology. The effectiveness of this technology on the quality of the environment is uncertain. We show that if an agent is sufficiently risk averse, voluntary contribution is a decreasing function of the average efficiency of depollution technology. If, on the contrary, the pollution effect is weaker than the substitution effect, the opposite holds. We show that precaution about environmental quality has two possible consequences that depend on agents' risk aversion. Therefore, the implications of a precautionary attitude lead us to consider the agents' risk-aversion characterization, which implies knowledge about prudent attitude.     

Communicating with the public during health crises: experts' experiences and opinions

Governments and health agencies worldwide are planning for a potential influenza pandemic. Their plans acknowledge the importance of public communication during an outbreak and include related guidelines and strategies. Emerging infectious disease (EID) communication is a new addition to the literature, drawing on health promotion communication, crisis communication and environmental/technological risk communication. This paper adds to the literature, exploring the notion of ‘effective communication during health crises' by reporting on interviews with 22 public health officials, scientists and communications professionals responsible for communicating with the public. When analyzed in the context of the risk communication literature, the interviews reveal several considerations for health risk communicators. First, given the important role that mass media will play in an EID outbreak, there is an urgent need for public health to build partnerships with journalists based on an understanding of the two parties' unique societal roles. Second, seemingly practical communications considerations – such as how certain to be about information before sharing it and whether to engage in two‐way communication with the public – have ethical dimensions that deserve attention. Third, there are unique challenges associated with communicating uncertainty, which would benefit from an exploration of the role of trust in health crisis communication.     

Developing communications about CCS: three lessons learned

To curb the risks of climate change, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change posits that global CO₂ emissions from the energy supply sector must be reduced to 90% below 2010 levels between 2040 and 2070. Electricity generation is the largest contributor to emissions from the energy supply sector. Carbon capture and storage (CCS) holds the promise of helping to reduce CO₂ emissions from coal-fired power plants, as part of a low-carbon portfolio that could also include energy efficiency, natural gas, renewables and nuclear power. To inform people’s decisions about whether or not to support the implementation of CCS, our team created brochures about 10 low-carbon technologies as well as a computer tool that helped users to develop technically realistic low-carbon portfolios. Here, we highlight three main lessons we learned in developing these communications about CCS: (1) when learning about CCS people also want to know about other alternatives; (2) using simple wording improves understanding, even about complex technologies; and (3) the time to communicate about CCS is now.     

Performance measurement and institutional processes: a study of managerial responses to public sector reform

Institutional aspects of performance measurement (PM) in public sector organizations are attracting increasing research interest. Only recently, however, has the literature on this topic recognized the pertinent critique of neo-institutional sociology (NIS) pivoting around its view of managers and organizations as primarily passive adaptors to change. This paper explores how the properties of institutional processes associated with recent reforms in the Norwegian health care sector impinge on the extent of pro-active choice exercised by senior management in the development of multidimensional PM reflecting the interests of a wider range of institutional constituencies. Addressing this issue, we draw on Oliver’s (1991) conceptual framework, based on a continuum of responses characterized by a varying degree of pro-active choice. The study thus provides a more detailed analysis of the managerial tactics in developing organizational PM than most prior research informed by NIS. We find support for several of Oliver’s hypotheses regarding the influence of institutional aspects, particularly those pertaining to the causes of the adoption of PM practices, the pattern in which these are diffused and the influence of constituency multiplicity and dependence, but also identify some areas requiring conceptual refinement in this respect.     

Democracy and risk-based decision-making: the next step in public involvement

Risk assessment has struggled to reconcile public views and opinion with the results of science-based objective assessment. In this paper, we attempt to tease apart subjective and objective considerations that risk management decisions entail. Through the use of examples from the New Zealand Environmental Risk Management Authority, we argue that risk managers need to use quantitative tools in order to develop an objective understanding of the biophysical outcomes of an activity. Decision-making should then enter a phase where democratic methods are used to allow people to weigh these physical outcomes subjectively. We believe allowing subjective democratic decisions, based on objective reality, will help enable risk management to bridge gaps between practitioners and the public.     

Increasing marginal costs and satiation in the private provision of public goods: group size and optimality revisited

It is widely recognized that the degree of inefficiency in the voluntary provision of a public good increases with the group size of an economy. However, we find that only a slight modification in the conventional assumptions gives rise to a profound difference in outcome. In particular, we show that there is a case where the Nash equilibrium provision and the efficient provision will converge as the size of an economy grows. To show this, we assume individuals face increasing marginal cost of voluntary provision and their preference function has a finite satiety point.      

Commonplaces and social uncertainty: negotiating public opinion

This article explores commonplaces in focus group discussions about genetically modified food. In the discussions, members of the general public interact with food biotechnology scientists while negotiating their attitudes towards genetic engineering. Their discussions offer an example of uncertainty discourse in which the use of commonplaces seems to be a central feature. My analyses support earlier findings that commonplaces serve important interactional purposes and that they are used for mitigating disagreement, for closing topics and for facilitating risk discourse. In addition, however, I argue that commonplaces are used to mitigate feelings of insecurity caused by uncertainty and to negotiate new codes of moral conduct.     

Perception of technological risk: insights from research and lessons for risk communication and management

Technology has become a familiar companion in all areas of life. Production consumption, administration, education, communication, and leisure activities are all shaped by the use of technologies. However, people often associate with the term ‘technology’ attributes, such as catastrophic and potentially dangerous, and tend to take the benefits of technological products for granted. This asymmetry in risk–benefit perception is one of the main reasons why many consumers are concerned about ‘hidden’ risks of technologies and why they demand stringent regulatory actions when they feel unduly exposed to potential emissions or waste products associated with the lifecycle of technologies. This situation is often aggravated by social amplification processes, by which even small risks receive high media attention and are blown out of proportion in the public arena. At the same time, however, one needs to acknowledge that many technologies have the potential to harm the human health and the environment. The purpose of this article is to review our knowledge about risk perception with respect to technologies, in particular emerging technologies, and to suggest possible strategies to use this knowledge for improving our risk management practice. Technological risk perception is defined in this article as the processing of physical signals and/or information about a potentially harmful impact of using technology and the formation of a judgment about seriousness, likelihood, and acceptability of the respective technology. Based on the review of psychological, social, and cultural factors that shape individual and social risk perceptions, we have attempted to develop a structured framework that provides an integrative and systematic perspective on technological risk perception and that may assist risk management and regulation in taking perceptions into account.     

Beyond under the dome: an environmental documentary amplified public risk perception about air pollution in China

Abstract

Air pollution is a major environmental problem in China and it poses serious risks to public health. Based on the social amplification of risk framework (SARF), this study examines how media, in particular, an impactful environmental documentary titled Under the Dome, influenced Chinese citizens’ risk perception about air pollution. Survey results showed that exposure to the documentary amplified risk perception and risk perception was significantly related to viewers’ information seeking behaviors, policy support, and individual mitigation action about this issue.     

个人捐赠何以可为:慈善信息与组织信任的作用机制研究

捐赠作为慈善事业发展的基石,对社会发展和社会的良性运行具有重要意义。本文在实证调查基础上,运用OLS回归方法分析了慈善信息、组织信任与个人捐赠行为三者之间的关系。研究发现:慈善信息的获取对捐赠行为具有积极影响,其中通过新兴媒介获取慈善信息的影响远远大于通过传统媒介获取信息的影响;慈善信息的获取不仅直接影响个人的捐赠行为,而且可以通过慈善组织信任度这个中介变量间接影响个人捐赠行为。     

Risk,responsibility and negative responses: a qualitative study of parental trust in childhood vaccinations

Abstract

Childhood vaccination programmes have benefits that far outweigh risks, in public health terms. However, some parents decide not to immunise their children. This paper explores the ways in which such parents talk about the perceived risks and benefits incurred by vaccinating (or not vaccinating) their children. Between 2013 and 2016, we undertook 29 in-depth interviews with non-vaccinating and/or ‘vaccine hesitant’ parents in Fremantle, Western Australia and Adelaide, South Australia. Our analysis of the interviews identified particular constructions of risk and responsibility. All interviews were transcribed and analysed using both inductive and deductive processes. Our analysis mirrors the chronological process through which parents navigate risk. We start with the concept of ‘responsibilisation’, which underpins parental engagement with decision-making and praxis. We then explore how responsiblisation takes the form of detailed and time-consuming ‘research’. Parents then attempt to navigate multiple and conflicting ‘risks’: the risk of vaccine-preventable diseases, risks associated with vaccination and risks associated with their own perceived lack of understanding. After engaging with risk, parents justify the decision and accept the associated ‘responsibility’. Parents use this sense of responsibility to navigate through the ‘responses’ of others, which we conceptualise as the risk of unwelcome consequences. In conclusion, parents have a reflexive understanding of the physical, psychological and socio-economic risks they incur as a consequence of their choice to either partially vaccinate, delay vaccination or reject vaccination for their children. They construct these risks with reference to particular discourses, engagement with expert opinion and lifestyle choices emblematic of late modernity. The risks they are willing to accept and the subsequent responsibility and blame they assume when choosing to abstain, or partially abstain, from vaccinating their children are, to the parents, coherent with their interpretation of best parenting practice.     

A comparative study of stakeholder risk perception and risk communication in Europe: a bovine spongiform encephalopathy case study

The ‘Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathy (TSE) Roadmap’ was published by the European Commission on 15 July 2005. The TSE Roadmap proposes the relaxation of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) measures in the short, medium and long term. According to the Roadmap, any relaxation of BSE measures following the scientific assessment should be initiated by an open discussion with all stakeholders and supported by a strong communication strategy. This paper discusses the risk perception, risk communication and risk management of TSEs in Europe, exemplified by the TSE Roadmap. The main conclusion is that in general, BSE is no longer a ‘hot’ topic for stakeholders, but there are slight differences between countries with respect to specific measures. Another important conclusion is that the TSE Roadmap is a very effective tool for risk communication with stakeholders.     

Focal points for improving communications about electromagnetic fields and health: a mental models approach

Central to the precautionary policy is the provision of information about electromagnetic fields (EMF) technology, exposures, potential health risks and exposure management actions to the public. To meet this need at the broadest level, beyond the specific technology foci of previous research, a research project was commissioned as part of Dutch Electromagnetic Fields and Health Research Programme. This study provides an assessment of Dutch EMF information needs from an ensemble of sources by addressing people’s existing ideas and beliefs, using a mental models approach. A summary expert model of influences on and consequences of exposure derived from search of the relevant literature is informed by interviews with 15 scientists and professionals with diverse expertise. Although the professionals characterize the physical characteristics and psychological aspects of exposure to EMF in daily life similarly, there is no consensus regarding potential health effects. Interviews with 12 lay people followed by a confirmatory survey of the general Dutch public (n = 403) reveal not only wide variation in beliefs regarding potential health effects of EMF, but also overestimation of the amount of radiation from public sources relative to personal sources of EMF. People do not feel adequately informed by the government about EMF, and knowledge of government policies on EMF is limited. Together, the evidence suggests three focal points for improving EMF risk communications: providing more clarity regarding the uncertainty of evidence for health effects, illuminating personal EMF exposures in daily life and providing more accessible and transparent information on governmental policies.     

Public awareness and perception of environmental,health and safety risks to electricity generation: an explorative interview study in Switzerland

Well-informed public preferences are key to enabling successful and sustainable energy transitions worldwide. However, limited explorative evidence exists on what the public already knows and wants to know about the electricity generation technologies and their Environmental, Health, and Safety (EHS) risks. Understanding these issues is important for preparing informational materials and facilitating formation of informed preferences. We present results of an explorative interview study with 12 Swiss people. Despite the public debate on energy in Switzerland, we still identify significant awareness and knowledge gaps as well as misconceptions related to both technologies and their EHS risks. For accidental risks, the people tend to think beyond probabilities and consequences and consider further aspects, such as risk controllability and trust in experts and authorities. Most importantly, we find that people are able and tend to think of the electricity system as a whole portfolio: they actively realize the need to deploy multiple electricity technologies and accept some of the EHS risks. We conclude with concrete recommendations for preparing informational materials on electricity sector transitions in Switzerland and elsewhere. We also argue that future social research on energy should pay more attention to public perception of whole technology portfolios rather than single technologies.