IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/inm/ormnsc/v65y2019i8p3800-3823.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Predicting Risk Perception: New Insights from Data Science

Author

Listed:
  • Sudeep Bhatia

    (Department of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104)

Abstract

We outline computational techniques for predicting perceptions of risk. Our approach uses the structure of word distribution in natural language data to uncover rich representations for a very large set of naturalistic risk sources. With the application of standard machine learning techniques, we are able to accurately map these representations onto participant risk ratings. Unlike existing methods in risk perception research, our approach does not require any specialized participant data and is capable of generalizing its learned mappings to make quantitative predictions for novel (out-of-sample) risks. Our approach is also able to quantify the strength of association between risk sources and a very large set of words and concepts and, thus, can be used to identify the cognitive and affective factors with the strongest relationship with risk perception and behavior.

Suggested Citation

  • Sudeep Bhatia, 2019. "Predicting Risk Perception: New Insights from Data Science," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 65(8), pages 3800-3823, August.
  • Handle: RePEc:inm:ormnsc:v:65:y:2019:i:8:p:3800-3823
    DOI: 10.1287/mnsc.2018.3121
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2018.3121
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1287/mnsc.2018.3121?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Baruch Fischhoff, 1995. "Risk Perception and Communication Unplugged: Twenty Years of Process," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 15(2), pages 137-145, April.
    2. David R. Holtgrave & Elke U. Weber, 1993. "Dimensions of Risk Perception for Financial and Health Risks," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 13(5), pages 553-558, October.
    3. M. Keith Chen, 2013. "The Effect of Language on Economic Behavior: Evidence from Savings Rates, Health Behaviors, and Retirement Assets," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 103(2), pages 690-731, April.
    4. Thomas F. Sanquist & Heidi Mahy & Frederic Morris, 2008. "An Exploratory Risk Perception Study of Attitudes Toward Homeland Security Systems," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 28(4), pages 1125-1133, August.
    5. repec:nas:journl:v:115:y:2018:p:e3635-e3644 is not listed on IDEAS
    6. Fischhoff, Baruch & Kadvany, John, 2011. "Risk: A Very Short Introduction," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199576203.
    7. Hyunyoung Choi & Hal Varian, 2012. "Predicting the Present with Google Trends," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 88(s1), pages 2-9, June.
    8. Takao Noguchi & Neil Stewart & Christopher Y Olivola & Helen Susannah Moat & Tobias Preis, 2014. "Characterizing the Time-Perspective of Nations with Search Engine Query Data," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 9(4), pages 1-5, April.
    9. J. Kruskal, 1964. "Multidimensional scaling by optimizing goodness of fit to a nonmetric hypothesis," Psychometrika, Springer;The Psychometric Society, vol. 29(1), pages 1-27, March.
    10. Slovic, Paul & Finucane, Melissa & Peters, Ellen & MacGregor, Donald G., 2002. "Rational actors or rational fools: implications of the affect heuristic for behavioral economics," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 31(4), pages 329-342.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. repec:cup:judgdm:v:15:y:2020:i:5:p:685-703 is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Mike Lindow & David DeFranza & Arul Mishra & Himanshu Mishra, 2021. "Scared into Action: How Partisanship and Fear are Associated with Reactions to Public Health Directives," Papers 2101.05365, arXiv.org.
    3. Sudeep Bhatia & Lukasz Walasek & Paul Slovic & Howard Kunreuther, 2021. "The More Who Die, the Less We Care: Evidence from Natural Language Analysis of Online News Articles and Social Media Posts," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 41(1), pages 179-203, January.
    4. Daniel Wall & Raymond D. Crookes & Eric J. Johnson & Elke U. Weber, 2020. "Risky choice frames shift the structure and emotional valence of internal arguments: A query theory account of the unusual disease problem," Judgment and Decision Making, Society for Judgment and Decision Making, vol. 15(5), pages 685-703, September.
    5. Steven Shepherd & Ted Matherly, 2021. "Racialization of peer‐to‐peer transactions: Inequality and barriers to legitimacy," Journal of Consumer Affairs, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 55(2), pages 417-444, June.
    6. Borchert, Philipp & Coussement, Kristof & De Weerdt, Jochen & De Caigny, Arno, 2024. "Industry-sensitive language modeling for business," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 315(2), pages 691-702.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Merve Alanyali & Tobias Preis & Helen Susannah Moat, 2016. "Tracking Protests Using Geotagged Flickr Photographs," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 11(3), pages 1-8, March.
    2. Roger Shepard, 1974. "Representation of structure in similarity data: Problems and prospects," Psychometrika, Springer;The Psychometric Society, vol. 39(4), pages 373-421, December.
    3. Mioara, POPESCU, 2015. "Construction Of Economic Indicators Using Internet Searches," Annals of Spiru Haret University, Economic Series, Universitatea Spiru Haret, vol. 6(1), pages 25-31.
    4. Giovanna Boccuzzo & Licia Maron, 2017. "Proposal of a composite indicator of job quality based on a measure of weighted distances," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 51(5), pages 2357-2374, September.
    5. Francesco Capozza & Ingar Haaland & Christopher Roth & Johannes Wohlfart, 2021. "Studying Information Acquisition in the Field: A Practical Guide and Review," CEBI working paper series 21-15, University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics. The Center for Economic Behavior and Inequality (CEBI).
    6. Lucius Caviola & Nadira Faulmüller & Jim. A. C. Everett & Julian Savulescu & Guy Kahane, 2014. "The evaluability bias in charitable giving: Saving administration costs or saving lives?," Judgment and Decision Making, Society for Judgment and Decision Making, vol. 9(4), pages 303-315, July.
    7. David W Carter & Scott Crosson & Christopher Liese, 2015. "Nowcasting Intraseasonal Recreational Fishing Harvest with Internet Search Volume," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(9), pages 1-18, September.
    8. Melissa Matlock & Suellen Hopfer & Oladele A. Ogunseitan, 2019. "Communicating Risk for a Climate-Sensitive Disease: A Case Study of Valley Fever in Central California," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 16(18), pages 1-15, September.
    9. Uwe Sunde & Thomas Dohmen & Benjamin Enke & Armin Falkbriq & David Huffman & Gerrit Meyerheim, 2022. "Patience and Comparative Development," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 89(5), pages 2806-2840.
    10. Wang, Hao & Han, Yonghui & Fidrmuc, Jan & Wei, Dongming, 2021. "Confucius Institute, Belt and Road Initiative, and Internationalization," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 71(C), pages 237-256.
    11. Sperlich, Stefan & Uriarte Ayo, José Ramón, 2014. "The Economics of "Why is it so hard to save a threatened Language?"," IKERLANAK info:eu-repo/grantAgreeme, Universidad del País Vasco - Departamento de Fundamentos del Análisis Económico I.
    12. Sansone, Dario, 2019. "Pink work: Same-sex marriage, employment and discrimination," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 180(C).
    13. Pulkit Sharma & Achut Manandhar & Patrick Thomson & Jacob Katuva & Robert Hope & David A. Clifton, 2019. "Combining Multi-Modal Statistics for Welfare Prediction Using Deep Learning," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(22), pages 1-15, November.
    14. Paola Giuliano & Paola Sapienza, 2020. "The Cost of Being Too Patient," AEA Papers and Proceedings, American Economic Association, vol. 110, pages 314-318, May.
    15. John M. Abowd & Ian M. Schmutte & William Sexton & Lars Vilhuber, 2019. "Suboptimal Provision of Privacy and Statistical Accuracy When They are Public Goods," Papers 1906.09353, arXiv.org.
    16. Victor Ginsburgh & Shlomo Weber, 2020. "The Economics of Language," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 58(2), pages 348-404, June.
    17. Bentzen, Jeanet Sinding, 2021. "In crisis, we pray: Religiosity and the COVID-19 pandemic," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 192(C), pages 541-583.
    18. Jesse T. Richman & Ryan J. Roberts, 2023. "Assessing Spurious Correlations in Big Search Data," Forecasting, MDPI, vol. 5(1), pages 1-12, February.
    19. Ma, Jie & Tse, Ying Kei & Wang, Xiaojun & Zhang, Minhao, 2019. "Examining customer perception and behaviour through social media research – An empirical study of the United Airlines overbooking crisis," Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Elsevier, vol. 127(C), pages 192-205.
    20. Muñoz-Mas, Rafael & Vezza, Paolo & Alcaraz-Hernández, Juan Diego & Martínez-Capel, Francisco, 2016. "Risk of invasion predicted with support vector machines: A case study on northern pike (Esox Lucius, L.) and bleak (Alburnus alburnus, L.)," Ecological Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 342(C), pages 123-134.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:inm:ormnsc:v:65:y:2019:i:8:p:3800-3823. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Asher (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/inforea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.