IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/jriskr/v2y1999i4p281-288.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Are trivial risks the greatest risks of all?

Author

Listed:
  • Paul Slovic

Abstract

Studies by Sjöberg published in 1999 ( Journal of Risk Research ), Volume 2, Number 2, pp. 129-49) have led him to conclude that perceived risk is mostly determined by probability of harm, whereas risk reduction demands are mostly determined by severity of harm and not probability. As a result, he finds that perceived risk does not predict demand for mitigation, leading him to question the value of the perceived risk construct. Sjöberg's results conflict with an extensive literature demonstrating (a) that protective behaviours are influenced by both probability and severity of harm and (b) that perceived risk is a strong predictor of desire for risk reduction. Why do Sjöberg's results conflict with this literature? The answer is to be found in the idiosyncrasies of his research designs and interpretations. In Study 1, Sjöberg asked people to judge the risk of adverse and sometimes trivial outcomes, leading his respondents to think of risk as the probability of those outcomes. In Study 2, he asked people to evaluate insurance against relatively probable losses, failing to test the hypothesis that probability thresholds trigger insurance purchases. Sjöberg's conclusions are thus misleading. For the purpose of understanding and predicting people's concerns, their desires for risk reduction, and their protective behaviours, it would be unwise to discard the concept of perceived risk.

Suggested Citation

  • Paul Slovic, 1999. "Are trivial risks the greatest risks of all?," Journal of Risk Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 2(4), pages 281-288, October.
  • Handle: RePEc:taf:jriskr:v:2:y:1999:i:4:p:281-288
    DOI: 10.1080/136698799376727
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/136698799376727
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/136698799376727?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
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Christoffersen, Jeppe & Holzmeister, Felix & Plenborg, Thomas, 2023. "What is risk to managers?," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance, Elsevier, vol. 40(C).
    2. Ian G. J. Dawson & Johnnie E. V. Johnson, 2017. "Does Size Matter? A Study of Risk Perceptions of Global Population Growth," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 37(1), pages 65-81, January.
    3. Dirk Grasmück & Roland W. Scholz, 2005. "Risk Perception of Heavy Metal Soil Contamination by High‐Exposed and Low‐Exposed Inhabitants: The Role of Knowledge and Emotional Concerns," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 25(3), pages 611-622, June.
    4. Anna Olofsson & Saman Rashid, 2011. "The White (Male) Effect and Risk Perception: Can Equality Make a Difference?," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 31(6), pages 1016-1032, June.
    5. Jocelyn Raude & Patrick Peretti-Watel & Jeremy Ward & Claude Flamand & Pierre Verger, 2018. "Are Perceived Prevalences of Infection also Biased and How? Lessons from Large Epidemics of Mosquito-Borne Diseases in Tropical Regions," Medical Decision Making, , vol. 38(3), pages 377-389, April.
    6. Ian G. J. Dawson & Johnnie E. V. Johnson, 2014. "Growing Pains: How Risk Perception and Risk Communication Research Can Help to Manage the Challenges of Global Population Growth," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 34(8), pages 1378-1390, August.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:taf:jriskr:v:2:y:1999:i:4:p:281-288. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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 Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/RJRR20 .

    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.