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Perceptions of risk characteristics of earthquakes compared to other hazards and their impact on risk tolerance
Author(s) -
Henrich Liv,
McClure John,
Doyle Emma E.H.
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
disasters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.744
H-Index - 70
eISSN - 1467-7717
pISSN - 0361-3666
DOI - 10.1111/disa.12284
Subject(s) - risk assessment , occupational safety and health , human factors and ergonomics , hazard , risk perception , poison control , environmental health , injury prevention , government (linguistics) , suicide prevention , risk analysis (engineering) , legislation , forensic engineering , natural hazard , engineering , medicine , perception , computer security , psychology , geography , computer science , law , linguistics , chemistry , philosophy , organic chemistry , pathology , neuroscience , political science , meteorology
People tolerate different levels of risk owing to a variety of hazards. Previous research shows that the psychometric properties of hazards predict people's tolerance of them. However, this work has not taken into account events such as earthquakes. The present study tested how earthquakes score vis‐à‐vis risk properties and risk tolerance as compared to five other familiar hazards. Participants from Wellington, New Zealand (N=139) rated these six hazards using measures of risk characteristics and risk tolerance. Participants demonstrated different levels of risk tolerance for the different hazards and viewed earthquakes as having similar risk features to nuclear power. They also preferred different risk mitigation strategies for earthquakes (more government funding) to the other five hazards (stronger legislation). In addition, earthquake risk tolerance was predicted by different risk characteristics than the other five hazards. These findings will help risk communicators in identifying which risk characteristics to target to influence citizens' risk tolerance.