Taxonomic Analysis of Perceived Risk: Modeling Individual and Group Perceptions Within Homogeneous Hazard Domains

Nancy Nighswonger Kraus and Paul Slovic

Risk Analysis, 1988, vol. 8, issue 3, 435-455

Abstract: Previous studies of risk perception have typically focused on the mean judgments of a group of people regarding the riskiness (or safety) of a diverse set of hazardous activities, substances, and technologies. This paper reports the results of two studies that take a different path. Study 1 investigated whether models within a single technological domain were similar to previous models based on group means and diverse hazards. Study 2 created a group taxonomy of perceived risk for only one technological domain, railroads, and examined whether the structure of that taxonomy corresponded with taxonomies derived from prior studies of diverse hazards. Results from Study 1 indicated that the importance of various risk characteristics in determining perceived risk differed across individuals and across hazards, but not so much as to invalidate the results of earlier studies based on group means and diverse hazards. In Study 2, the detailed analysis of railroad hazards produced a structure that had both important similarities to, and dissimilarities from, the structure obtained in prior research with diverse hazard domains. The data also indicated that railroad hazards are really quite diverse, with some approaching nuclear reactors in their perceived seriousness. These results suggest that information about the diversity of perceptions within a single domain of hazards could provide valuable input to risk‐management decisions.

Date: 1988
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (27)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1539-6924.1988.tb00508.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:8:y:1988:i:3:p:435-455

Access Statistics for this article

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