Suchergebnisse

It has been suggested that public participation during decision making about risks can lead to more widely accepted risk policies. This article discusses an experiment to determine if this is true when people are made aware of the fact that a participatory decision‐making process has taken place only through information disclosed during a subsequent risk communication effort. The results from this experiment showed that, after receiving information during risk communication that cast risk policies about space exploration as the product of a participatory decision process, participants in the study felt more supportive of the resulting decisions than did participants in a control group. This result coincided with the participants in the study group perceiving the risks associated with the decision to be lower and the benefits higher. Responses from these participants also showed that they were more satisfied with the decision‐making process than they were with the outcome of the decision itself. Therefore, it may be premature to view the objective of participatory decision‐making approaches—and the risk communication efforts that discuss them—as a means of making risk policies more widely acceptable to the public at large. Rather, it may be better to view the benefits of these approaches in terms of their ability to help lead to higher quality decisions that are the product of more widely accepted decision processes.

The management of natural‐ and human‐induced wildland fires is an intricate process that must balance two considerations: that of fire as a necessary natural disturbance and that of the risks that fire poses. Reconciling tradeoffs between these risks and benefits is contingent upon informed, directed, and two‐way communication between wildland fire managers and stakeholders. In an effort to aid with the design of such a communication effort, this study used mental models research to determine the unique wildland fire information and decision‐making needs of stakeholders living at the wildland‐urban interface of a fire‐prone area. While the analysis revealed many similarities in how stakeholders conceptualized the risks and benefits of wildland fire, many misconceptions and important gaps in understanding on the part of both expert and nonexpert respondents were identified.

Public participation is now part of many decision making processes for managing environmental and technical risks. This article describes a test of a strategy to improve the quality of public input by combining themes from risk communication with the prescriptive decision process of value‐focused thinking. It was hypothesized that participating in a structured, value‐focused risk communication approach would lead people to make more thoughtful, better informed, and hence higher quality decisions by helping them to consider and discuss a wider array of decision‐relevant issues and address key value trade‐offs. It is also anticipated that utilizing a value‐focused decision structure would make participants feel more comfortable with their decisions; more satisfied that their selected alternative reflected their key concerns; and, in the end, more satisfied with their decisions. To test these hypotheses, six groups comprised of 7 to 10 people participated in conventional "alternative‐focused" risk communication workshops and eight groups participated in similar "value‐focused" workshops. All workshops dealt with the management of risks to riverine salmon habitat from hydroelectric electricity generation. The results provided support for the hypotheses: the value‐focused decision structure led to more thoughtful and better informed risk management decisions.

Findings from previous studies of individual decision‐making behavior predict that losses will loom larger than gains. It is less clear, however, if this loss aversion applies to the way in which individuals attribute value to the gains and losses of others, or if it is robust across a broad spectrum of policy and management decision contexts. Consistent with previous work, the results from a series of experiments reported here revealed that subjects exhibited loss aversion when evaluating their own financial gains and losses. The presence of loss aversion was also confirmed for the way in which individuals attribute value to the financial gains and losses of others. However, similar evaluations within social and environmental contexts did not exhibit loss aversion. In addition, research subjects expected that individuals who were unknown to them would significantly undervalue the subjects' own losses across all contexts. The implications of these findings for risk‐based policy and management are many. Specifically, they warrant caution when relying upon loss aversion to explain or predict the reaction of affected individuals to risk‐based decisions that involve moral or protected values. The findings also suggest that motivational biases may lead decisionmakers to assume that their attitudes and beliefs are common among those affected by a decision, while those affected may expect unfamiliar others to be unable to identify and act in accordance with shared values.