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。风险传播者不能假定接受他们信息的人是照本宣科地这样做的。读者使用他们的先验知识来组织和理解新的信息。读者先验知识的内容和组织都会影响他们对新信息的理解。因此，如果风险沟通(1)解决先前的误解，(2)考虑到读者的目标、先前的知识和处理新信息的认知限制，那么它应该更有效。在风险沟通的背景下，这些主张没有得到充分的评估。本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对风险交际效果的影响。第三项研究将前两项研究的结果整合为两项结构不同的完整风险沟通。在所有的研究中，提出了多种措施来评估风险沟通的有效性，包括在回忆、识别和解决问题任务方面的表现。该项目将编制经经验检验的文件和评价工具以及风险通报者的实用指南。期望对风险感知、风险沟通和风险沟通评价研究作出贡献。

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.