Conclusions of the Fourth European Conference on Risk Perception, Behaviour, Management and Response - ECRP 2023

The Fourth ECRP conference in June 2023 in Bucharest, Romania, has gathered again our two communities, the Risk Perception and Behaviour Survey of Surveyors (Risk-SoS) and the H2020-DRS-01 Cluster on risk perception and adaptive behaviour (a grouping of several Horizon Europe projects). The ECRP conference cycle aims to contribute to improve the ability of researchers in the field to work together and build cumulative knowledge, fostering scientific communication and collaborative learning, ultimately leading to joint research publications and projects. This cycle emerged in response to the challenges posed by the current fragmentation of the studies of risk perceptions and how perceptions influence behaviour. It remains unclear why people fail to act adaptively to reduce future losses, even when there is ever richer information available on a wide range of hazards (flood, drought, earthquakes, etc). The current collection of seemingly independent case studies hinders comparability and transferability across scales and contexts and hampers recommendations for policy and risk management. Another challenge derives from the lack of a robust theoretical base and the apparent path dependency of design choices routinely based on previous research, consolidating the predominance of socio-psychological theories and methodological individualism, which are often non-contextual. A greater diversity of theoretical frameworks could lead to increased attention to socioecological processes and the socio-cultural context of risk, which might be critical for case studies cross-validation.