Suchergebnisse

Past research indicates that personal flood experience is an important factor in motivating mitigation behavior. It is not fully clear, however, why such experience is so important. This study tested the hypothesis that people without flooding experience underestimate the negative affect evoked by such an event. People who were affected by a severe recent flood disaster were compared with people who were not affected, but who also lived in flood‐prone areas. Face‐to‐face interviews with open and closed questions were conducted (n= 201). Results suggest that people without flood experience envisaged the consequences of a flood differently from people who had actually experienced severe losses due to a flood. People who were not affected strongly underestimated the negative affect associated with a flood. Based on the results, it can be concluded that risk communication must not focus solely on technical aspects; in order to trigger motivation for mitigation behavior, successful communication must also help people to envisage the negative emotional consequences of natural disasters.

Experts on the risk of flooding have developed very detailed maps for different parts of Switzerland that indicate the types of damage possible and the probabilities of adverse events. Four categories of risk severity are defined on the maps, ranging from high risk to no risk. Based on these existing maps, we selected respondents for a mail survey, some from areas high in risk and others from low‐risk regions. Respondents answered several questions related to flood risk perception and preparedness. Survey results showed that respondents' risk perceptions were correlated with the experts' risk assessments. Respondents who lived in areas designated "no risk" by the experts had lower perceptions of risk than respondents who lived in areas with higher levels of designated risk. With regard to concrete prevention behavior, no differences between people living in different risk areas were observed. Survey results further suggest that many inhabitants do not know that flooding maps exist for their region. Results suggest that in some regions people overestimate the risks associated with flooding. Consequently, some people are more afraid of flooding than is justified by the facts. Some people show prevention behavior that most likely is superfluous. However, in other regions people underestimate the risks associated with flooding. These people do not show prevention behavior, and they are not well prepared for an adverse event. Furthermore, results suggest that respondents' experiences with flooding are positively related to their perceptions of flood risk. Findings of the present study are in line with the availability heuristic.

Traditionally, environmental policy in most countries is based on command and control and - to a lesser extent - on the more modern economic instruments. Today, there is a strong need for complementing this traditional policy with a set of approaches that rely on communication and informal influence to stimulate voluntary and cooperative action. The comprehensive and analytical description of these approaches and the related instruments presented in this book extend environmental policy thinking by in-depth treatment of tools for communication and diffusion, collaborative agreements, as well as service and infrastructure instruments. The different types of approaches and instruments are described in detail from an actor-oriented perspective. Special emphasis is put on new approaches based on principles of social and behavioural psychology. To date, these have barely been discussed in relation to conventional instruments. Several empirical studies carried out in Switzerland illuminate selected aspects

Results of past research suggest that affect plays an important role in risk perception. Because affect may also increase the availability of risks, affect and availability are closely related concepts. Three studies tested the hypothesis that evoking negative affect (fear), either through past experience or through experimental manipulation, results in greater perceived risk. The present research focused on perception of flooding risk. Study 1 and Study 2 showed that participants who received risk information concerning a longer time period (e.g., 30 years) perceived more danger compared with participants who received risk information for one year. Study 2 showed that the interpretation of risk information was influenced by participants' own experiences with flooding. In Study 3, affect was experimentally manipulated. After looking at photographs depicting houses in a flooded region, participants perceived greater risk compared with participants in a control group. Taken together, the results of these three studies suggest that affect is important for successful risk communication. Results of the present research are in line with the affect heuristic proposed by Slovic and colleagues.

Trust, risk perception, and the TCC model of cooperation / Timothy C. Earle, Michael Siegrist and Heinz Gutscher -- Social identity and the group context of trust : managing risk and building trust through belonging / Michael A. Hogg -- Trust and risk : implications for management / Eric M. Uslaner -- A social judgement analysis of trust : people as intuitive detection theorists / Mathew P. White and J. Richard Eiser -- Scepticism, reliance and risk managing institutions : towards a conceptual model of "critical trust" / Nick Pidgeon, Wouter Poortinga and John Walls -- Societal trust in risk analysis : implications for the interface of risk assessment and risk management / Lynn Frewer and Brian Salter -- Rebuilding consumer trust in the context of a food crisis / Lucia Savadori ... [et al.] -- Trust and risk in smallpox vaccination / Ann Bostrom and Emily Atkinson -- The what, how and when of social reliance and cooperative risk management / George Cvetkovich and Patricia L. Winter -- Getting out of the swamp : towards understanding sources of local officials' trust in wetlands management / Branden B. Johnson -- Antecedents of system trust : cues and process feedback / Peter de Vries, Cees Midden and Anneloes Meijnders -- Trust and confidence in crisis communication : three case studies / Michael Siegrist, Heinz Gutscher and Carmen Keller

Trust is an important factor in risk management. There is little agreement among researchers, however, on how trust in risk management should be studied. Based on a comprehensive review of the trust literature a "dual‐mode model of social trust and confidence" is proposed. Trust and confidence are separate but, under some circumstances, interacting sources of cooperation. Trust is based on value similarity, and confidence is based on performance. According to our model, judging similarity between an observer's currently active values and the values attributed to others determines social trust. Thus, the basis for trust is a judgment that the person to be trusted would act as the trusting person would. Interpretation of the other's performance influences confidence. Both social trust and confidence have an impact on people's willingness to cooperate (e.g., accept electromagnetic fields or EMF in the neighborhood). The postulated model was tested in the applied context of EMF risks. Structural equation modeling procedures and data from a random sample of 1,313 Swiss citizens between 18 and 74 years old were used. Results indicated that after minor modifications the model explained the data very well. In the applied context of EMF risks, both trust and confidence had an impact on cooperation. Results suggest that the dual‐mode model of social trust and confidence could be used as a common framework in the field of trust and risk management. Practical implications of the results are discussed.

Extensive scientific investigations often fail to identify specific carcinogens that have caused geographic clusters of cancer cases. In many such examples, public health officials and other experts have concluded that the cluster is not the result of a particular local environmental condition. Despite this conclusion by experts, concerned members of local communities often persist in believing that the cancer cluster was not random. The present study accounts for the persistence of this belief on the basis of two factors: (a) the tendency of the human mind to identify patterns (and causes), rather than randomness; and (b) a lack of social trust in public health experts. It was expected that perceived shared values evoke social trust. Individuals who conclude that public health experts share their values should be more likely to accept the experts' conclusion that a cancer cluster reflects randomness, not a particular local cause. Individuals who trust authorities should be more inclined than individuals not having trust to accept that a geographic cluster of cancer cases is a coincidence. Data from Swiss students (N= 334) supported these expectations. Additionally, significant gender differences were observed. Females had less trust in authorities and perceived the cancer cluster as less likely to be a result of pure chance than did males. Practical implications of the results are discussed.