Collaborative Research in Decision, Risk, and Management Science

有效的风险管理通常需要有效的风险沟通。风险传播者承担不起假设那些收到他们的信息的人是以表格形式这样做的。读者利用他们的先验知识来组织和理解新信息。读者的先验知识的内容和组织都会影响他们对新信息的解读。因此，如果风险沟通(1)解决了先前的误解，(2)在处理新信息时考虑到读者的目标、先验知识和认知限制，风险沟通应该会更有效。在风险沟通的背景下，这些主张没有得到充分评估。该项目试图填补这一空白。第一项研究考察了几种消除对全球气候变化和60赫兹电场和磁场的误解的设计。第二项研究考察了文本结构和文本理解辅助工具对风险沟通有效性的影响。第三项研究将前两项研究的结果整合为两个在结构上不同的完整风险沟通。在所有研究中，包括在回忆、识别和解决问题任务上的表现，都提出了多个指标来评估风险沟通的有效性。该项目将为风险传播者编制经验性检验的文件和评价工具以及实用指南。预计将对风险感知、风险沟通和风险沟通评估研究做出贡献。

Effective risk management often requires effective risk communication. Risk communicators cannot afford to assume that those who receive their communication do so with a tabula rasa. Readers use their prior knowledge to organize and understand new information. Both the contents and organization of readers' prior knowledge affect how they interpret new information. Therefore risk communication should be more effective if it (1) addresses prior misconceptions, and (2) takes into account the readers' goals, prior knowledge, and cognitive limitations in processing new information. In the context of risk communication, these propositions have not been adequately evaluated. This project attempts to fill this gap. The first study examines several designs for dispelling misconceptions about global climate change and 60 Hertz electric and magnetic fields. The second study examines the influence of text structure and text comprehension aids on risk communication effectiveness. The third study integrates the results of the first two into two complete risk communications that differ structurally. Multiple measures are proposed to evaluate risk communication effectiveness in all studies, including performance on recall, recognition, and problem-solving tasks. The project will produce empirically tested documents and evaluation instruments as well as practical guidelines for risk communicators. Contributions to risk perception, risk communication and risk communication evaluation research are anticipated.