Subject Differences in the Perception of Risk

Abstract

Previous studies dealing with perceived risk have made the implicit assumption that all subjects view the product in roughly the same way. Since the risk literature suggests that different person-types exist (e.g., risk-takers, risk-avoiders, etc.), it seems as if subject characteristics would affect the way that people perceive products and their risks. The goal of the present study is to examine subject differences in perceived risk by (1) parsing subject into meaningful groups, and (2) examining the extent to which these groups access different information about products when evaluating the risks. Using cluster analysis, subjects were assigned to one of three groups. These groups differed from one another in terms of how they viewed the products as a whole. Group 1 perceived all products, in general, to be hazardous—they were labeled Fearful. Group 2 perceived the product as non-hazardous, while having a very low degree of personal knowledge of the risks or familiarity with the products—they were labeled Fearless. Group 3 perceived the products, as a whole, to be non-hazardous, but they had a high degree of personal knowledge of the risks and familiarity with the products—they were labeled Informed. These three groupings of subjects differed in the types of information they accessed when evaluating the products. Group 1 (Fearful) attended to information about the hazards, making fine distinctions between levels of hazardousness for different products. Group 2 (Fearless) and Group 3 (Informed) did not make such distinctions with regard to hazardousness. Rather, they perceived most products to be about the same, unless there was the potential for catastrophic consequences. In general, this study demonstrated that people could be assigned to meaningful and homogeneous groups, whose perception of products (and product risks) was determined, to some extent, by person-traits.