Perceived Risk and Citizen Preferences for Governmental Management of Routine Hazards

Bibliographic Data

ID6328100
AuthorsBrian J Gerber (0000-0002-2157-3671, West Virginia University), Grant W Neeley (0000-0003-2323-0848, University of Dayton)
Year2005
Volume33
Issue3
Pages395-418
Publication date2005-08-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenuePolicy Studies Journal (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0190-292X • E-ISSN: 1541-0072
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/j.1541-0072.2005.00122.x
OpenAlexW2017801852
LanguageEN
Citations received28
References cited47

Risk perceptions are important to the policy process because they inform individuals’ preferences for government management of hazards that affect personal safety, public health, or ecological conditions. Studies of risk in the policy process have often focused on explicating the determinants of risk perceptions for highly salient, high consequence hazards (e.g., nuclear energy). We argue that it is useful to also study more routinely experienced hazards; doing so shows the relevance of risk perceptions in individuals’ daily lives. Our investigation focuses on the impact perceived risk has on citizens’ preferences over hazard management policies (as distinct from identifying risk perception determinants per se). We use a recursive structural equation model to analyze public opinion data measuring attitudes in three distinct issue domains: air pollution, crime, and hazardous waste storage and disposal. We find that citizens utilize perceived risk rationally: greater perceived risk generally produces support for more proactive government to manage potential hazards. This perceived risk–policy response relationship generally holds even though the policy options respondents were asked to consider entailed nontrivial costs to the public. The exception seems to be when individuals know less about the substantive issue domain

Actuarial science · Affect (linguistics · Business · Economic growth · Economics · Environmental health · Government (linguistics · Hazard · Perception · Political science · Politics · Public economics · Public opinion · Public policy · Relevance (law · Risk analysis (engineering · Risk assessment · Risk management · Risk perception · Climate Change Communication and Perception · Disaster Management and Resilience · Medicine · Psychology · Risk Perception and Management · Finance