Engaging with comparative risk appraisals: public views on policy priorities for environmental risk governance

Sophie A. Rocks, Iljana Schubert, Emma Soane, Edgar Black, Rachel Muckle, Judith Petts, George Prpich and Simon J. Pollard

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: Communicating the rationale for allocating resources to manage policy priorities and their risks is challenging. Here, we demonstrate that environmental risks have diverse attributes and locales in their effects that may drive disproportionate responses among citizens. When 2,065 survey participants deployed summary information and their own understanding to assess 12 policy-level environmental risks singularly, their assessment differed from a prior expert assessment. However, participants provided rankings similar to those of experts when these same 12 risks were considered as a group, allowing comparison between the different risks. Following this, when individuals were shown the prior expert assessment of this portfolio, they expressed a moderate level of confidence with the combined expert analysis. These are important findings for the comprehension of policy risks that may be subject to augmentation by climate change, their representation alongside other threats within national risk assessments, and interpretations of agency for public risk management by citizens and others.

Keywords: environment; policy prioritization; strategic risk (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: G32 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 10 pages
Date: 2017-09-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr, nep-env and nep-rmg
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Published in Risk Analysis, 1, September, 2017, 37(9), pp. 1683 - 1692. ISSN: 0272-4332

Downloads: (external link)
http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/71580/ Open access version. (application/pdf)

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:ehl:lserod:71580

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library LSE Library Portugal Street London, WC2A 2HD, U.K.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by LSERO Manager ().