Integrating Risk Perception Measures, Antecedents, and Outcomes

自风险分析出现以来，风险认知一直是其核心，但我们如何定义和衡量“风险认知”可以极大地影响学者对其来源或结果的把握。不幸的是，在多个领域（例如健康行为）内和跨领域，风险感知措施的使用并不系统。引人注目的是四个关键主题——如何衡量风险认知；风险认知如何影响行为意图和政策支持等结果；和风险认知的来源——尽管存在明显的相互影响，但通常是单独研究的：例如，风险认知是否以及如何受到其他变量的影响或影响，可能取决于它们的测量方式。大多数关于这些主题的定量研究都使用横断面调查设计，不足以检验最关键的假设。使用纵向面板设计可以更好地测试时间变化，但即使（很少）使用，人们也会更多地关注观察到的关联符号，而不是其大小或符号是否随时间变化。我们对这些关联是否或如何因危害而变化也知之甚少。通过更系统地评估多种感知指标、危害和时间之间的关联，有关相似性和差异的发现可以改善风险沟通和风险管理工作。这些改进将减少对人类及其价值的伤害。拟议的研究使用焦点小组和美国全国代表性的横断面和纵向面板调查。这是首次对风险感知措施、前因和结果（行为意图、政策支持）进行同步建模的系统尝试，提供了整合这四个相关主题和多个学术学科的领域的机会。这项工作旨在提供一个基础，可以扩展到特定领域和主题领域，并有可能扩展到本研究项目生成的美国数据之外的其他社会。新知识是关于风险感知模式在人类和环境中普遍化的程度。该奖项反映了 NSF 的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Risk perception has been central to risk analysis since it began, but how we define and measure “risk perception” can greatly affect scholars’ grasp of its sources or outcomes. Unfortunately, use of risk perception measures has been unsystematic, within and across multiple fields (e.g., health behavior). Strikingly, four critical topics—how to measure risk perception; how risk perception shapes outcomes such as behavioral intentions and policy support; and sources of risk perceptions—usually are studied separately, despite obvious mutual implications: e.g., whether and how risk perceptions are affected by, or affect, other variables might depend on how they are measured. Most quantitative research on these topics has used cross-sectional survey designs, inadequate to test most critical hypotheses. Temporal changes are better tested with longitudinal panel designs, but even when (rarely) used, far more attention is paid to the observed sign of the association than to whether its magnitude or sign varies over time. We also know little about whether or how these associations vary across hazards. By more systematically assessing associations across multiple perception measures, hazards, and time, the findings about similarities and differences can improve risk communication and risk management efforts. These improvements will reduce harms to humans and what they value. The proposed research uses focus groups and U.S. nationally representative cross-sectional and longitudinal panel surveys. This first systematic attempt to simultaneously model risk perception measures, antecedents, and outcomes (behavioral intentions, policy support) offers a chance to integrate a field splintered across these four related topics and multiple scholarly disciplines. This effort aims to provide a foundation that can be extended to both specific fields and topic areas, and potentially to other societies beyond the U.S. data generated in this research project. The new knowledge is about the degree to which risk perception patterns generalize across humans and situations.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.