Perceptions of Risk: Paradox and Challenge

Perceived risk can be characterized as a battleground marked by strong and conflicting views about the nature and seriousness of the risks of modern life. The paradox for those who study risk perception is that, as people in many industrialized nations have become healthier and safer on average, they have become more—rather than less—concerned about risk, and they feel increasingly vulnerable to the risks of modern life (see, for example, figure 1). The stakes are high! These perceptions and the opposition to technology that accompanies them have puzzled and frustrated industrialists and regulators in many nations and have led numerous observers to argue that the apparent pursuit of a “zero-risk society” threatens political and economic stability in those nations (see table 1). Aaron Wildavsky, a political scientist, commented as follows on this state of affairs: How extraordinary! The richest, longest lived, best protected, most resourceful civilization, with the highest degree of insight into its own technology, is on its way to becoming the most frightened. Is it our environment or ourselves that have changed? Would people like us have had this sort of concern in the past? ... Today, there are risks from numerous small dams far exceeding those from nuclear reactors. Why is the one feared and not the others? Is it just that we are used to the old or are some of us looking differently at essentially the same sorts of experience?