The Socio-Cultural Dynamics of Risk Perception

风险和风险管理发生在丰富和复杂的社会文化背景下，在这种背景下，个人群体倾向于以不同的方式选择、忽视和解释风险信息。这个探索性项目是一个广泛项目的一部分，该项目旨在了解风险感知、决策和行为的社会文化动态。具体地说，这项研究将结合最近的三个研究轨迹(情感意象、文化理论和“白人男性效应”)，系统地努力识别、描述和解释离散的“解释性风险社区”的存在：具有相互兼容的风险认知、情感意象、文化世界观和社会人口特征的个体集群。这项研究的结果将有助于形成关于情感、象征意义、文化世界观和社会文化背景在风险感知和决策中的作用的新兴理论。该项目以以下研究问题为指导：我们能否在美国公众中识别出不同的风险解释群体？如果是这样的话，他们的特点是什么？这些解释性社区是动态的、不断变化的，还是相对稳定的、超越特定风险的？换句话说，在性质上有很大不同的解释性社区是否围绕不同种类的风险(例如，健康风险与安全风险)形成，或者是否存在以类似方式一致地感知和解释各种风险的群体？最后，为什么一些解释性社区将特定的危险视为极端风险，而另一些社区将这些相同的危险视为低风险或根本不存在风险？

Risks and risk management occur within a rich and complex socio-cultural context, in which groups of individuals are predisposed to select, ignore and interpret risk information in different ways. This exploratory project is part of a broad program to understand the socio-cultural dynamics of risk perception, decision-making and behavior. Specifically, this research will integrate three recent research trajectories (affective imagery, cultural theory, and the "white male effect") in a systematic effort to identify, describe and explain the existence of discrete "interpretive communities of risk:" clusters of individuals who share mutually compatible risk perceptions, affective imagery, cultural worldviews, and socio-demographic characteristics. Results from this study will contribute to emerging theory on the roles of affect, symbolic meaning, cultural worldviews and socio-cultural context in risk perception and decision making. This project is guided by the following research questions: Can we identify distinct interpretive communities of risk among the American public? If so, what are their distinguishing characteristics? Are these interpretive communities dynamic and in constant flux, or are they relatively stable, transcending particular risks? In other words, do interpretive communities that are substantially different in character form around different kinds of risks (e.g., health vs. security risks), or are there groups who consistently perceive and interpret a wide variety of risks in similar ways? Finally, why do some interpretive communities perceive particular hazards as extreme risks, while others perceive these same hazards as low or non-existent risks?