Risk perception process

In February 2009, after the complaints of three families, the French Court of Appeal condemned - without any scientific evidence - a mobile operator to dismantle a mobile phone antenna near Lyon (Vincent 2009). This event reveals that lay risk perception is more than ever taken into account in the risk management process. It is thus fundamental for the manager, who is eager to optimize his/her work, to secure a good understanding of the risk perception process. 

Such an extension of the psychometric paradigm reveals that the study of risk apprehension is more and more centred on the perceiving subject than on the characteristics of the physical danger. This new look at risk perception tends to make it less dependent on the possible bias in the answers induced by the comparison of very different activities and technologies, inherited fi om the early catalogues of risks, whose objective aimed more at risk acceptance than at studying risk perception processes (Starr 1969). 

The risk asses sment may include an evaluation of what the risks mean in practice to those effected. This will depend heavily on how the risk is perceived. Risk perception involves peoples beliefs, attitudes, judgements and feelings, as well as the wider social or cultural values that people adopt towards hazards and their benefits. The way in which people perceive risk is vital in the process of assessing and managing risk. Risk perception will be a major determinant in whether a risk is deemed to be acceptable and whether the risk management measures imposed are seen to resolve the problem. 

Risk may be perceived differently across societal groups, and how consumers cope with perceived risk will depend on their risk attitude. Before a person is able to respond to risk, risk must first be perceived (Trimpop, 1994). Stone et al. (1994) modeled the identification of risks as a cognitive process of identification, storage, and retrieval. The level of risk that a food-related behavior provides depends on the consumer s risk perception (Sparks et al., 1995). 

Risk management is the part of the process where characterized risks are evaluated against options to reduce or avoid them. In general, aspects other than science (for instance cost, social responsibility, and (consumer) risk perception) are taken into account here. 

Risk perception is an important ingredient of risk management. Even if actual risks are relatively low, people may perceive something as a serious threat and risk managers may decide to take action in order to reassure people. Risk perception thus is a social and political reality, which must be accounted for in the management process. It is therefore important to know how people perceive mixture risks and which factors influence mixture risk perception. 

It is remarkable how little research has been done on the perception of mixture risks. This may be explained by the fact that in real life people are generally exposed to mixtures and not to single substances. Perception studies that deal with environmental pollution implicitly include perception of mixture risks. Where scientists tend to consider mixtures as an extra complicating factor in the risk assessment process, laypersons consider mixtures a fact of life. They find it difficult to understand why scientists study effects of single substances, while in real life they are exposed to mixtures they fail to understand the complexity of research on chemical mixtures. 

An open and sincere comprehensive risk communication process led by the facility manager creates a better-informed public that is able to understand real risks (vs. perceptions) and is likely to respond effectively in case of an actual emergency. 

A further divide between risk analysts arises between realism and constructionism, but this debate can be seen as unifying positivist and relativist approaches. Constructionism considers how social and cultural perspectives influence risk definitions and interpretations [12]. In comparison, realists exclude social and cultural phenomena in their reference of risk, but do acknowledge their existence [12]. Constructionism resembles constrained relativism and does not represent the paradigms of the unconstrained relativists. For positivists and realists, acknowledging risk perceptions provides a potential framework to incorporate the risk perceptions into their process of risk analysis because risk perceptions can be subject to scientific analysis as social phenomena. 

Risk assessment evaluates risk in terms of hazard and exposure, but reference to risk levels must account for different perceptions of risk as well as scientific uncertainties in risk assessment. In short, this research project considers the importance of social and institutional processes in influencing risk perceptions and risk acceptability. This book therefore takes a constrained relativist approach by incorporating risk perceptions in the research framework. An unconstrained relativist perspective would imply that no scientific study is reliable or robust. By contrast, a constrained relativist approach can provide a useful basis for examining the different social and cultural factors involved in regulatory risk management. 

Risk assessment processes often exclude those potentially harmed by environmental degradation as they traditionally do not include public perceptions, priorities, or needs. 

Information obtained from risk assessments is used to aid public health officials in developing management decisions. However, the public will often view the risks associated with an agent differently than will the scientific experts, even after costly and time-consuming risk assessment efforts have been implemented. These discrepancies may be attributable to difference in how the public and scientific conununities dehne risk, or they may stem from the fundamental lack of trust the public has toward the risk assessment process (Slovic 1991). Regardless, risk perception is an important topic that invariably must be considered before the implementation of regulations or public health management decisions. 

Burt and Stevenson (2009) and Burt et al. (2009) examined employees perceptions of organizational processes and how these are associated with their reactions to new employees. Perceptions of recruit and selection processes are discussed in Chap. 5, and perceptions of socialization and prestart training processes are discussed in Chap. 6. Both chapters note how a perception that organizational processes helps ensure safety can be associated with a lowering of risk perceptions, a decrease in behaviors which should ensure safety, and thus an overall increase in workplace safety risk. Scales used to measure perceptions of tmst in selection process, trust in induction processes, and employees reactions to new employees (compensatory behaviors) are published in the appendix of Burt et al. (2009). 

As noted earlier, people will tend to optimize their performance over time to meet a variety of goals. If an unsafe change is detected, it is important to respond quickly. People incorrectly reevaluate their perception of risk after a period of success. One way to interrupt this risk-reevaluation process is to intervene quickly to stop it before it leads to a further reduction in safety margins or a loss occurs. But that requires an alerting function to provide feedback to someone who is responsible for ensuring that the safety constraints are satisfied. 

In the absence of accurate information about the state of the process, risk perception may be reevaluated downward as time passes without an accident. In fact, risk probably has not changed, only our perception of it. In this trap, risk is assumed to be reflected by a lack of accidents or incidents and not by the state of the safety control structure. 

While lack of accidents could reflect a strong safety control structure, it may also simply reflect delays between the relaxation of the controls and negative consequences. The delays encourage relaxation of more controls, which then leads to accidents. The basic problem is inaccurate risk perception and calculating risk using the wrong factors. Ihis process is behind the frequently used but rarely defined label of complacency. Complacency results from inaccurate process models and risk awareness. 

Fischhoff, B. (1995) Risk perception and communication unplugged Twenty years of process, Risk Analysis, 15 (2) 137-145. 

Despite these possible contexts, information retrieved from the questionnaires is treated as if all answers were given by the interviewees independently of a decision process with regard to the activity or technology at hand. This assumption can of course not be verified, and correlations between answers might reveal more a global decision with respect to an activity than actual correlations between risk characteristics in the perception process. 

Strategies to move health care toward high reliability include communication, risk acknowledgment, an emphasis on active learning, teamwork, and crew resource management. Tools include risk and process auditing, process control, reward systems, and perception of risk. 

Dholakia, U. M. (2001], "A motivational process model of product involvement and consumer risk perception," European Journal of Marketing, 35 (11/12], 1340-62. Diamantopoulos, A., Riefler, P., and Roth, K. P. (2008], "Advancing formative measurement models," Journal of Business Research, 61 (12], 1203-18. 

The problem of the difference between objective risk and subjective risk perception is avoided by the so-called psychometric models which aim to directly record subjective evaluations as a basis for decision-making processes. The expressed preference method [9-10], which uses opinion polls, did, however, show the change in the way the population evaluates technical developments. 

People, as individuals and as groups, act in accordance with their own perception of the risk. Risk assessment and risk management processes will only be successful in reducing injury if there is widespread involvement of those who are potentially affect by the hazard. The safety professional may be the person who provides technical data and an initial ranking of risk. It is for a larger group to decide the appropriate responses. 

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