Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Abstract

Research on risk perception has been motivated by a variety of practical and theoretical interests, from public policy making and consumer product litigation to psychophysics and cognitive psychology. This paper examines risk perception data for activities that are directly related to public safety. Vredenburgh and Cohen (1993, 1995) have conducted several studies in which subjects responded to risk questionnaires about recreational and work related activities. This paper provides analyses of the risk perception data not included in the previous reports from these studies. The perceived-risk ranks for the recreational and diverse activities are given. Subjects regarded hang gliding as the most dangerous activity and water-skiing as the least dangerous of these sports. Although the full 7-point scale was used by at least some subjects, the means all begin at the middle of the scale and ran towards the high-risk end. Taken at face value, the results of these questionnaires have direct applications to policy and legal issues.

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Godfrey

S.S.

Laughery

L.R.

(1984). The biasing effects of product familiarity on consumers' awareness of hazard. Proceedings of the Human Factors Society 28th Annual Meeting, 483–486

Kerr

J.H.

Svebak

(1989). Motivational aspects of preference for and participation in “risk” and “safe” sports. Personality and Individual Differences, 10, 7, 797–800

Moore

L.L.

(1990). The effect of hazard and system information on estimated risk. Proceedings of the Human Factors Society 34th Annual Meeting, 508–512

Otsubo

S.M.

(1988). A behavioral study of waning labels for consumer products: Perceived danger and use of pictographs. Proceedings of the Human Factors Society 32nd Annual Meeting, 536–540

Slovic

Fishoff

Lichtenstein

(1979). Rating the risks, Environment, 21, 14–39

Vredenburgh

A.G.

Cohen

H.H.

(1993). Compliance with warnings in high risk recreational activities: skiing and scuba. Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society 37th Annual Meeting. 945–949

Vredenburgh

A.G.

Cohen

H.H.

(1995). High risk recreational activities: Skiing and scuba - what predicts compliance with warnings. International Journal of Industrial Ergonomics, 15, 123–128

Vredenburgh

A.G.

Cohen

H.H.

(1995). Does culture affect risk perception?: Comparisons among Mexicans, African-Americans, Asians, and Caucasians. Human Factors and Ergonomics Society 39th Annual Meeting, 1015–1019

Wogalter

M.S.

Desaulniers

D.R.

Brelsford

J.W.

Jr. (1986). Perceptions of consumer products: Hazardousness and warning expectations. Proceedings of the Human Factors Society 30th Annual Meeting, 1197–1201

10.

Wogalter

M.S.

Brelsford

J.W.

Desaulniers

D.R.

Laughery

K.R.

(1991). Consumer product warnings: The role of hazard perception. Journal of Safety Research, 22, 71–82

Comparative Risk Perception of Common Activities

Abstract

Get full access to this article

References