U.S.-Japan Cooperative Research: Comparisons of Risk Attitudes and Perceptions

该奖项支持俄勒冈州尤金市决策科学研究所的保罗·斯洛维奇博士和东京女子基督教大学心理学系Hirotada HiRose教授之间的合作研究项目。具体地说，它支持美国和日本研究人员就一个名为“风险态度和认知的比较”的项目举行初步工作组会议。该项目还得到了美国国家科学基金会决策、风险和管理科学项目的资助。这是一个雄心勃勃的项目，旨在解决一个事关国家利益的重要问题。尽管美国和日本都是高度工业化的国家，但它们管理技术风险的方法却截然不同。美国主要依靠的是利益相关方之间的对抗关系、公众的广泛参与和法律制度的广泛使用的“对抗性模式”。相比之下，日本的体制是建立在以政府和工业界私下谈判为中心的“合作模式”的基础上，强调建立共识。合作研究中的研究人员假设，这些不同的方法反映在公众对总体风险，特别是风险管理的态度和认知上的重大差异。调查人员将通过对两国的风险态度和风险认知进行平行研究来检验这些差异。他们将利用他们在分析不同人群中的风险组成部分方面的丰富经验。除了提供与两国未来互动相关的信息外，这种比较还将增进对国家风险管理风格和方法的基本了解。

This award supports a cooperative research project between Dr. Paul Slovic of the Decision Science Research Institute in Eugene, Oregon and Professor Hirotada Hirose, Department of Psychology, Tokyo Women's Christian University. Specifically it supports an initial working group meeting between the U.S. and Japanese researchers on a project entitled "Comparisons of Risk Attitudes and Perceptions." This project is also supported by a grant from the NSF Decision, Risk, and Management Science Program. It is an ambitious project to address an important issue of national consequence. Although the United States and Japan are highly industrialized countries, their approaches to managing technological risks are quite different. The United States relies primarily on a "confrontational model" characterized by adversarial relationships between interested parties, widespread public participation, and extensive use of the legal system. The Japanese system, in comparison, is based on a "cooperative model" centered upon private negotiations between government and industry with an emphasis on consensus building. The investigators in the cooperative study hypothesize that these contrasting approaches are reflected in major differences in public attitudes and perceptions of risk in general and risk management in particular. The investigators will examine these differences by carrying out parallel studies of risk attitudes and risk perceptions in both countries. They will draw upon their extensive prior experience in analyzing the components of risk in various populations. In addition to providing information that will be relevant to future interactions between the two countries, this comparison will increase basic understanding of national risk-management styles and approaches.