Small town, big risks: natural, cultural and social risk perception (Ciudad pequeña, grandes riesgos: percepción del riesgo natural, cultural y social)

Abstract

Benavente (Portugal) is a small town which, compared to the rest of the country, has higher levels of the following three types of risks: earthquakes (natural risk), criminality (social risk) and the running of the bulls (cultural risk). This has allowed us to explore spatial bias, i.e., whether people have lower perceptions of risk at the local level than at the national or international levels, or if there are any risks strongly related with the local culture that show a different pattern. We also test whether risk perception dimensions identified by a psychometric paradigm relate to the three risk types that are highly prevalent in Benavente. The results support the spatial bias in relation to earthquakes and criminality but reveal a reverse pattern regarding the running of the bulls (cultural risk). The results also showed that people scored higher on the Dread dimension for earthquakes, followed by criminality, with lower scores in regard to the running of the bulls. The opposite was verified regarding the Control dimension.

Perception of Occupational and Environmental Risks and Hazards among Mineworkers: A Psychometric Paradigm Approach

“…Briefly, in the psychometric approach, individuals are requested to rate their perception of various risks and hazards based on several common risk characteristics identified in previous studies [ 20 , 21 , 22 , 23 , 24 , 25 ]. Subsequently, a principal component analysis (PCA) was used to reduce the number of proposed characteristics into two main dimensions or factors, frequently identified and named as “dreaded” and “unknown risks.” The former refers to the extent to which a threat is perceived as being dreadful, uncontrollable, and involuntary, with a catastrophic potential and fatal consequences; however, the latter entails the extent to which an event or hazard is believed to be unobservable, unknown to individuals, unfamiliar, new, and has delayed consequences [ 15 , 17 ].…”

Who worries about microplastics? The relative importance of personal values and individual risk judgements / ¿A quién le preocupan los microplásticos? La importancia relativa de los valores personales y los juicios individuales de riesgo

“…El paradigma psicométrico sostiene que la percepción del riesgo es fundamentalmente subjetiva (Slovic, 1987). Conforme a este paradigma, se pide a los individuos que clasifiquen los peligros en función de características comunes de riesgo cualitativas y subjetivas, identificadas en estudios anteriores Jenkins et al, 2021;Luís et al, 2020;Valente et al, 2021). Posteriormente, se puede aplicar un análisis de componentes principales (ACP) para reducir las características a sus componentes subyacentes.…”

“…The psychometric paradigm maintains that risk perception is fundamentally subjective (Slovic, 1987). In this paradigm, individuals are asked to rank hazards concerning common qualitative and subjective risk features identified in previous studies (e.g., Jenkins et al, 2021;Luís et al, 2020;Valente et al, 2021). Afterward, a principal component analysis (PCA) can be used to reduce the features into their underlying components.…”

A Novel Framework of Public Risk Assessment Using an Inte-Grated Approach Based on AHP and Psychometric Paradigm

“…In comparison, the latter stream of research is focused on mitigating and communicating risks and decision making under uncertainty [6][7][8][9][10]. A growing body of literature recognizes the critical role of risk communication in the success of risk management [6,[11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24].…”