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Are People Interested in Probabilities of Natural Disasters?
Author(s) -
Michailova Julija,
Tyszka Tadeusz,
Pfeifer Katarzyna
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
risk analysis
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.972
H-Index - 130
eISSN - 1539-6924
pISSN - 0272-4332
DOI - 10.1111/risa.12685
Subject(s) - event (particle physics) , task (project management) , probabilistic logic , risk aversion (psychology) , natural disaster , psychology , natural (archaeology) , social psychology , expected utility hypothesis , computer science , cognitive psychology , artificial intelligence , engineering , mathematics , statistics , geography , physics , systems engineering , archaeology , quantum mechanics , meteorology
Previous research has demonstrated that in naturalistic risky decisions people tend to have little interest in receiving information about probabilities. The present research asked whether subjects search for and employ probabilistic information in situations that are representative of natural disasters: namely, situations where (1) they have no control over the occurrence of a negative event and (2) there might be huge losses of physical and human capital. Pseudo‐realistic scenarios involving risky situations were presented to 116 experimental participants. Based on the active information search paradigm, subjects were given only a basic description of the situation and had to acquire additional information from the experimenter. In addition to the main task, the individual risk aversion of participants was measured. We demonstrate that in pseudo‐naturalistic scenarios involving natural disasters people tend to show more interest in probabilities compared to scenarios with generally more controllable risks. Moreover, this interest increases with an increase in the importance of the situation to the decisionmaker. The importance of the situation also has a positive influence on the thoroughness of information search. The experiment detected no connection between individual risk aversion and information search.