Understanding Post-Exposure Risk Management Decisions: How Affect and Uncertainty Modulate Risk Appraisals and Subsequent Risk Management Choices

了解暴露后风险管理决策：影响和不确定性如何调节风险评估和后续风险管理选择

• 批准号: 0353480
• 负责人: Robin Gregory
• 金额: $ 8.43万
• 依托单位: Decision Science Research Institute
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2003
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2003-12-01 至 2004-11-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0353480&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Understanding; Post; Exposure; Risk; Management

Research involving people's responses to risk exposure reveals two sharply contrasting trends. The first is a post-exposure wake-up call, which results in a heightened awareness of risk and a strong motivation to invest in actions designed to reduce future exposure. The second is a post-exposure letdown, with people feeling safer because an adverse but low-probability risk event has taken place, thereby lowering their perceived risk of future exposure. Natural hazards (e.g., floods and forest fires) often elicit this second response, leading to the rapid reconstruction of communities in previously affected areas and the misreading of probabilities as predictions (e.g., so that the near-term occurrence of a 1-in-100 year event leaves residents feeling safe for the next century). One result of these two opposing trends is that risk-mitigation actions undertaken by communities and government often focus on near-term, reactive responses (e.g., requiring fire-resistant building materials in recently burned areas) to the neglect of long-range research and planning efforts (e.g., adaptive management responses) that could significantly reduce uncertainty through learning more about the likelihood and nature of future hazards. Destructive forest fires in the Pacific Northwest during the summer of 2003 provide a time-limited opportunity to investigate how exposure to catastrophic risk influences decision makers' interpretation of uncertainty and their affective responses to future risk-management choices. Using structured interviews and surveys with key participants (community residents, technical experts, decision makers) in both burned and unburned areas, we will examine how information is evaluated, manipulated, and used during the process of making risk-management decisions. We believe that both misinterpretations of uncertainty and altered appraisals of risk conspire to impede long-term learning and the implementation of adaptive management responses when they are most needed. Research findings should advance understanding of affective processes and help to identify priority factors that decision makers use to interpret uncertainty. The broader impacts of the proposed research include the design of decision aids to improve post-exposure risk-management strategies, thereby reducing injuries to humans, environmental losses, and property damage resulting from future risk events.

关于人们对风险暴露的反应的研究揭示了两种截然不同的趋势。第一种是风险暴露后的警钟，这会提高对风险的认识，并产生投资于旨在减少未来风险暴露的行动的强烈动机。第二种是暴露后的失望，人们感到更安全，因为发生了不利但概率较低的风险事件，从而降低了他们对未来暴露的感知风险。 自然灾害（例如，洪水和森林火灾）经常引起这种第二种反应，导致先前受灾地区的社区迅速重建，并将概率误读为预测（例如，使得百年一遇的事件的近期发生使居民在下一个世纪感到安全）。 这两种相反趋势的一个结果是，社区和政府采取的风险缓解行动往往侧重于短期的反应性反应（例如，在最近被烧毁的地区需要耐火建筑材料）而忽视了长期的研究和规划工作（例如，适应性管理对策），通过更多地了解未来灾害的可能性和性质，可以大大减少不确定性。 2003年夏季太平洋西北部的毁灭性森林火灾提供了一个时间有限的机会，调查如何暴露于灾难性风险影响决策者的不确定性的解释和他们的情感反应，未来的风险管理选择。 使用结构化访谈和调查的关键参与者（社区居民，技术专家，决策者）在燃烧和未燃烧的地区，我们将研究如何评估，操纵，并在风险管理决策过程中使用的信息。 我们认为，对不确定性的误解和对风险评估的改变，共同阻碍了长期学习和在最需要的时候实施适应性管理对策。 研究结果应促进对情感过程的理解，并有助于确定决策者用来解释不确定性的优先因素。拟议研究的更广泛影响包括设计决策辅助工具，以改善暴露后风险管理策略，从而减少未来风险事件造成的人类伤害，环境损失和财产损失。