Aviation Risk Perception: A Comparison Between Experts and Novices

Mary E. Thomson, Dilek Önkal, Ali Avcioğlu and Paul Goodwin

Risk Analysis, 2004, vol. 24, issue 6, 1585-1595

Abstract: This article describes an exploratory investigation of the risk perceptions of experts and novices in relation to helicopter operations, under conditions where the participants are matched on various characteristics previously found to affect perceptions, such as demographic, gender, and background factors. The study reports considerable evidence of perceptual differences between the two participant groups (i.e., expert pilots and candidate pilots). We find that the experts' perceptions of relative risks are more veridical, in terms of their higher correlation with the true relative frequencies. A significant positive correlation between the flight hours and the contextual risk‐taking tendency is also shown, leading the experienced pilots' choices toward risky alternatives in scenarios—a potential result of their overconfidence based on superior task performance. Possible explanations are offered for the findings and potential avenues for future research are identified.

Date: 2004
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0272-4332.2004.00552.x

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:wly:riskan:v:24:y:2004:i:6:p:1585-1595

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Risk Analysis from John Wiley & Sons
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().