Public perception of scientific uncertainty in relation to food hazards

Susan Miles and Lynn J. Frewer

Journal of Risk Research, 2003, vol. 6, issue 3, 267-283

Abstract: The research reported here aims to understand how people react to statements expressing risk uncertainty information in the context of a commonly experienced potential hazard, food related risks. Public perception of seriousness of risk for themselves, and for other people was examined for different types of uncertainty, for each of five different food hazards. The results indicated that participants responded to the different types of uncertainty in a uniform way, suggesting that perception of risk associated with uncertainty is not affected by the 'type' of uncertainty. The results further indicated that the seriousness of risk, in the presence of statements of uncertainty, was perceived to be greater for pesticides and genetic modification compared to BSE, high fat diets and Salmonella . It was argued that this could be due to the perceptions of low personal control, and high societal responsibility to protect people and societal control over exposure to the potential risks of pesticides and genetic modification. Under circumstances where people feel they have little personal control over their exposure to a particular hazard, and those social institutions that are perceived to be in control of protecting the public indicate that there is uncertainty associated with risk estimates, the hazard may appear to be 'out of control', which is associated with a perception of serious risk.

Date: 2003
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (15)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/1366987032000088883 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:jriskr:v:6:y:2003:i:3:p:267-283

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/RJRR20

DOI: 10.1080/1366987032000088883

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Risk Research is currently edited by Bryan MacGregor

More articles in Journal of Risk Research from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().