Risk communication for catastrophic events: results from focus groups

Focus group methods are adapted here to address two important needs for risk communication: (1) to provide approaches to risk communication in very extreme and catastrophic events, and (2) to obtain risk communication content within the specific catastrophe area of chemical and biological attacks. Focus groups were designed and conducted according to well‐established protocols using hypothetical sarin and smallpox attacks resulting in a chemical or biological release in a confined public space in a transit system. These cases were used to identify content for risk communication information and suggest directions for further research in this area. Common procedures for conducting focus groups were used based on an initial review of such procedures. Four focus groups – two for each type of release – each lasted about two hours. Participants were professionals normally involved in emergencies in health, emergency management, and transportation. They were selected using a snowball sampling technique. Examples of findings for approaches to communicating such risks included how information should be organized over time and how space, locations, and places should be defined for releases to anchor perceptions geographically. Examples of findings for risk communication content are based on how professionals reacted to risk communications used during the two hypothetical releases they were presented with and how they suggested using risk communications. These findings have considerable implications for using and structuring focus groups to derive risk communication procedures and types of content to be used in the context of catastrophes.     

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.     

Risk Management—the Revealing Hand

Many believe that the recent emphasis on enterprise risk management function is misguided, especially after the failure of sophisticated quantitative risk models during the global financial crisis. One concern is that top‐down risk management will inhibit innovation and entrepreneurial activities. The authors disagree and argue that risk management should function as a “revealing hand” that identifies, assesses, and mitigates risks in a cost‐efficient way. In so doing, risk management can add value by allowing companies to take on riskier projects and strategies. But to avoid problems encountered in the past, particularly during the recent crisis, risk managers must overcome deep‐seated individual and organizational biases that prevent managers and employees from thinking clearly and analytically about their risk exposures. In this paper, the authors draw lessons from seven case studies about the ways that a corporate risk management function can foster highly interactive dialogues to identify and prioritize risks, help to allocate resources to mitigate such risks, and bring clarity to the value trade‐offs and moral dilemmas that often must be addressed in decisions to manage risks. Developing an effective risk management system requires, first, an agreement about a company's objectives, values, and priorities; second, a clear formulation and communication of the firm's “risk appetite”; and, third, continuous monitoring of a firm's risk‐taking behavior against its declared risk limits. Quantitative risk models should not be the sole—or even the most important—basis for decision‐making. They cannot replace management judgment and are best used to trigger in‐depth discussions among managers and employees about the most important risks faced by the firm and the best ways to respond to them.     

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.     

Neglected and overemphasized risks: the opinions of risk professionals

Research on risks has mainly been devoted to detailed analyses of such risks that are subject to public debate and policy decision making. However, many if not most of the risks that are now the subject of regulation were once neglected. Experts in conjunction with regulators have a crucial role in putting risks on the policy agenda. But what views do experts have on the matter of attention to risks? In order to answer this question risk assessment experts were asked to list the risks they considered to be over‐emphasized, respectively neglected. Radiation risks constituted the largest category of risks reported to be over‐emphasized. Other risks often reported to be over‐emphasized included BSE, GMOs, amalgam, and air traffic. Lifestyle risks were the largest category of risks reported to be neglected. Other risks often listed as neglected included radon (as an exception within the radiation category), road traffic, socio‐economic risks, energy production excluding nuclear power, and local accidents (including fires and workplace accidents). Risks mentioned about equally often as neglected and over‐emphasized included chemicals and crime. There was a correlation between perceived risk and neglect: risks considered to be neglected were also judged as larger. For a comparison, the topics of articles in the journal Risk Analysis from 1991–2000 were categorized into the same risk categories that were used for the questionnaire. The risks most commonly treated in the journal (chemicals and cancer) coincided with the risks which experts in our survey considered to be overemphasized rather than neglected.     

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.     

Public perceptions of environmental risk in China

China, as a ‘double risk’ society, is in urgent need for effective environmental risk management systems. Compared with other risks, man-made environmental risks have not been given due weight. Public awareness and perceptions of environmental risks are crucial in all phases of effective risk management. However, little is known about public perceptions of environmental risks in China. To contribute to better understanding of public perception of environmental risk, a questionnaire survey was conducted among university students in Beijing, who represent a group with high level of education and a generally high sensitivity to new information. The results show that even this group has limited knowledge about environmental risks and current risk management systems. Further studies are needed to understand the social construction of environmental risks in China and to seek ways to involve the Chinese public in emergency response and risk management.     

Heterogeneous Beliefs, Speculation, and the Equity Premium

Agents with heterogeneous beliefs about fundamental growth do not share risks perfectly but instead speculate with each other on the relative accuracy of their models' predictions. They face the risk that market prices move more in line with the trading models of competing agents than with their own. Less risk‐averse agents speculate more aggressively and demand higher risk premiums. My calibrated model generates countercyclical consumption volatility, earnings forecast dispersion, and cross‐sectional consumption dispersion. With a risk aversion coefficient less than one, agents' speculation causes half the observed equity premium and lowers the riskless rate by about 1%.     

Public companies' cybersecurity risk disclosures

Though cybersecurity risks are significant and could materially affect business operations and the integrity of financial reporting, there is limited empirical research on the cybersecurity risk disclosure trends and practices of public companies. In this study, we conduct a longitudinal study of the content and linguistic characteristics of public companies' cybersecurity risk disclosure practices as well as factors that may drive disclosure trends. The results show that the two most commonly disclosed cybersecurity risks are risks of service/operation disruption and risks of data breach. Item 1A of the 10-K Report is the most commonly used disclosure location, but some companies also use Items 1 and 7 to disclose regulation risks and cyber incidents, respectively. The length of cybersecurity risk disclosures increases linearly during the period of our study. This increase is associated with the issuance of SEC guidance (2011 and 2018), industry, overall cybersecurity risks in the general environment, company size, and prior cybersecurity breach incidents. Disclosures have also become more difficult to read in general. They are more difficult to read as firm size increases and are easier to read as the proportion of intangible assets increases or after an executive change. Firms have increased their usage of litigious words in their disclosures. Bigger firms, on average, tend to use less litigious language, but companies in industries with high business information technology intensity (e.g., consumer services, software and services, and banking) tend to use more litigious language than other companies.     

Strategies to create risk awareness and legitimacy: the Swedish climate campaign

Social means of risk regulation often only arise in response to media attention and public opinion. In contrast, in the case of climate change, the Swedish government proactively launched a public information campaign to promote public awareness and knowledge of the risks associated with climate change, with the explicit objective of promoting acceptance of public means of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. This paper analyses the framing of climate change in the Swedish climate campaign and its communication strategy. What was the message of the campaign narrative? What did it imply concerning the causes, effects, and management of and responsibility for climate change? What means were used to communicate the risks of climate change? The paper analyses the campaign narrative, its references to various affective images of climate change, and the various storytelling techniques it used. It concludes that the Swedish climate campaign relied on a unidirectional view of risk communication and proffered a narrative containing inconsistencies and ambivalence. The analysis demonstrates that despite a thoroughly worked‐out strategy, a well‐defined message, and the intention to speak clearly, a complex problem such as climate change cannot easily be transformed into a single, coherent story.     

How do people perceive graphical risk communication? The role of subjective numeracy

This study aims to evaluate directly how a graphical risk ladder is perceived and how this perception is related to people’s subjective numeracy. Gaze durations and frequencies were used to examine visual attention. Participants (N = 47) appeared to focus on the target risk information, whereas referential information was less attended. Subjective numeracy was negatively correlated with total watching time and the absolute number of gaze events. Results suggest that participants with low subjective numeracy have more difficulty in comprehending the graph, and that they process the graphical information less efficiently than the participants with high subjective numeracy. In addition, the position of referential risks on risk ladders could influence people’s risk perception. Based on these findings, we provide some implications for the design of risk communication graphs and for the use of graphs in informing persons with low subjective numeracy about risks.     

Consumer versus Expert Hazard Identification: A Mental Models Study of Mutation‐bred Rice

Novel foods have been the object of intense public debate in recent years. Despite efforts to communicate the outcomes of risk assessments to consumers, public confidence in the management of potential risks has been low. Various reasons behind this have been identified, chiefly a disagreement between technical experts and consumers over the nature of the hazards on which risk assessments should focus, and perceptions of insufficient openness about uncertainties in risk assessment. Whilst previous research has almost exclusively focused on genetically modified foods, the present paper investigates plant varieties developed by means of mutation breeding, a less‐debated class of novel foods. Two studies were conducted that investigated the mental models of experts and laypeople. The results revealed that the mental models of both groups differed in terms of scope, depth and the role of uncertainty. Furthermore, a number of misconceptions became apparent in the study of laypeople's mental models, often related to the regulatory system governing risk assessments of novel foods. Critical issue are outlined and communication needs are discussed.     

Something old and something new: comparing views about nanotechnology and nuclear energy

This paper provides a review and evaluation of different food‐risk prioritization and management frameworks that have been developed by governmental food‐safety authorities, regulatory agencies and non‐governmental institutions worldwide. It emphasizes the need for a new science‐ and risk‐based system approach to microbial risk prioritization. We find that most studies and projects argue for a systematic and multi‐disciplinary approach to risk prioritization but nevertheless lack it. Human and public health issues have constituted the core focus of food‐risk analysis in food‐borne risk prioritization studies, where the majority of studies use the concept of disease burden. Even though it is widely recognized that economic and market‐level impacts of microbial hazards and preventive interventions to reduce food‐borne risks are crucial to the performance of industries and markets, they are almost never accounted for in risk prioritization frameworks.     

Won’t we scare them? The impact of communicating uncontrollable risks on the public’s perception

Authorities often refrain from communicating risks out of fear to arouse negative feelings amongst the public and to create negative reactions in terms of the public’s behavior. This study examines the impact of communicating risks on the public’s feelings and behavioral intentions regarding an uncontrollable risk related to fresh produce. In addition, the impact of risk communication is compared between a situation in which the risk either does or does not develop into a crisis, by means of a 2 (risk communication vs. no risk communication)?×?2 (crisis communication vs. no crisis communication) between-subjects factorial design. The results show that communicating risks has a positive impact on the behavioral intention to keep on eating fresh produce compared to when no risk communication was provided, as it reduces negative feelings amongst the public. In addition, the findings illustrate that when a risk develops into an actual crisis, prior risk communication can result in greater trust in the government and reduce perceived government responsibility for the crisis when the crisis hits. Based on these findings, it can be suggested that risk communication is an effective tool for authorities in preparing the public for potential crises. The findings indicate that communicating risks does not raise negative reactions amongst the public, on the contrary, and that it results in more positive perceptions of the authorities.     

Analysing Perceived Downside Risk: the Component Value‐at‐Risk Framework

Multinational companies face increasing risks arising from external risk factors, e.g. exchange rates, interest rates and commodity prices, which they have learned to hedge using derivatives. However, despite increasing disclosure requirements, a firm's net risk profile may not be transparent to shareholders. We develop the ‘Component Value‐at‐Risk (VaR)’ framework for companies to identify the multi‐dimensional downside risk profile as perceived by shareholders. This framework allows for decomposing downside risk into components that are attributable to each of the underlying risk factors. The firm can compare this perceived VaR, including its composition and dynamics, to an internal VaR based on net exposures as it is known to the company. Any differences may lead to surprises at times of earnings announcements and thus constitute a litigation threat to the firm. It may reduce this information asymmetry through targeted communication efforts.     

Perceived health risks and perceptions of expert consensus in modern food society

The article deals with perceptions of food and health risks. Relevant questions are: (1) To what degree do consumers associate specific negative health consequences with food additives and genetically modified food, and do their perceptions differ from the experts’ views? (2) How do consumers perceive experts’ evaluations of health risks connected to food additives and genetically modified food? The results are based on a survey of Norwegian residents in 1999/2000, and of a selected sample of Norwegian experts on food and risks. There were great differences between consumers and experts in their assessments of health risks. To varying extents, consumers associate various health consequences with the risk factors. Consumers seem to perceive experts as more united about the risk factors as health risks than experts do themselves. The findings are discussed with reference to the stigma concept and to a social constructionist perspective. The results contribute to the understanding of consumer perception of risks and their understanding of expert agreement about health risks. They also point to the importance of the interplay between consumers and experts in the public debate and communication process about food and risks.     

Monitoring and limit order submission risks

This paper presents a formal analysis of the relation between monitoring and limit order submission risk. With heterogeneous information, limit order traders face two types of risk. First, they may be “picked off” when prices change unexpectedly after the limit order is entered (known as free trading option risk). Second, they face the possibility that their limit order will not result in a trade. To mitigate these risks, traders can monitor information and prices and cancel or revise their orders as needed. But such monitoring is costly, resulting in a trade-off between the cost of monitoring and the risks of limit order submission. The model predicts that if the stock is actively traded, limit order submission risks and order cancellations/revisions are positively related. Further, shares with a wide bid-ask spread will tend to have a lower rate of order cancellations and revisions than shares with small bid-ask spreads. Finally, the model suggests that if larger capitalization stocks have lower costs of gathering information (and hence more intense monitoring of limit orders), there will be more cancellations and revisions in limit orders. A sample of 23 liquid stocks provides evidence that is consistent with these three main hypotheses.     

The end of risk communication as we know it

According to the US National Research Council, risk communication ought to be viewed as a dialogue among people conducted to help facilitate a more accurate understanding of risks and, related, the decisions they may make to manage them. But, in spite of this widely accepted perspective on risk communication, there is often a disconnect between how it is defined and how it is practiced. Rather than focusing on a true dialogue aimed at improving risk assessments and risk management decisions, risk communication is often viewed as means of simply educating people about existing risk assessments so that, on their own, they might make (or contribute to) better risk management decisions. More worrisome, risk communication is still often seen as a means of ‘correcting’ misconceptions about, or perceptions of, risk; in other words, risk communication is used as a vehicle for attempting to align lay perceptions with their expertly assessed severity. In this paper, I argue that risk communication must become more decision-focused if it is to meet the objectives set forth – in 1989 – by the US National Research Council.     

Reducing microbiological risk in the kitchen: piloting consensus conference methodology as a communication strategy

Foodborne diseases are a major public health problem. Improper storage and food preparation at home can favour microbial contamination of food. Consumers play a crucial role in controlling this risk. To reduce exposure to risk, it is essential to provide information and guidance on contamination management in the home. The aim of this study was to pilot a method of participatory communication addressed to young consumers and designed to reduce the microbiological risks associated with the consumption of meat products. The methodology was based on application of the ‘consensus conference’ model on food safety issues. The consensus conference served not only as a participatory strategy to share knowledge but also as a method for sharing in the development of risk communication content (guidelines) to be disseminated to the reference target. Young people’s perceptions, habits and behaviour in the kitchen were explored in the preparatory stage of the consensus conference by means of a survey and a focus group. Three consensus conferences were held in Italy attended by 60 university students (19 and 22 years old). Application of the consensus conference model as a communication process proved to be an effective opportunity to engage young consumers and experts on the topic of food safety. This discursive participation approach was broadly welcomed by the participants. Specifically, direct interaction with the experts was considered to be an important part of the communication process. The findings of the project were used to select concise communication content based on the perceptions, behaviours and fact-finding needs of the selected target. Publication of this content in the form of guidelines on microbiological risk management at home has enabled the results of the consensus conferences to be extended and the targeted communication material on risk reduction in daily food handling practices to be disseminated.     

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.