The Social Amplification of Risk

Description

The management of and communication about risks has become a major question of public policy and intellectual debate in the modern world. The social amplification of risk framework describes how both social and individual factors act to amplify or dampen perceptions of risk and through this create secondary effects such as stigmatisation of technologies, economic losses or regulatory impacts. This volume, edited by three of the world's leading analysts of risk and its communication, brings together contributions from a group of international experts working in the field of risk perception and risk communication. Key conceptual issues are discussed as well as a range of recent case studies (spanning BSE and food safety, AIDS/HIV, nuclear power, child protection, Y2K, electromagnetic fields, and waste incineration) that take forward the state-of-the-art in risk amplification theory. The volume also draws attention to lessons for public policy, risk management and risk communication practice.

Nick Pidgeon is Professor of Environmental Sciences at the University of East Anglia, and Director of the Centre for Environmental Risk. He has written extensively on risk communication and perception issues, including a major contribution to the UK Royal Society Report on Risk (1992), as well as on causes of organisational accidents. He is the author of Man-Made Disasters (1997). Roger E. Kasperson is Director of the Stockholm Environment Institute. He is the leading geographer in the field of risk and risk communication over the last 30 years. His publications include Communicating Risks to the Public (with J. Stallen, 1991), Nuclear Risks in Comparative Perspective (1987), Acceptable Evidence: Science and Values in Hazard Management (with J. X. Kasperson, 1991), and Regions at Risk (with J. X. Kasperson and B. L. Turner, 1995). Paul Slovic is President of Decision Research and Professor of Psychology at the University of Oregon. He is the leading psychologist in the field of risk perception and behavioral decision making over the past 30 years. His publications include Acceptable Risk with B. Fischhoff, S. Lichtenstein, R. Keeney and P. Derby (Cambridge, 1981), Judgement Under Uncertainty with D. Kahneman and A. Tversky (2nd edition, Cambridge, 2002), The Perception of Risk (2000), and Risk Media and Stigma with J. Flynn and H. Kunreuther (2001).

'This volume discusses key conceptual issues as well as a range of recent case studies (spanning BSE and food safety, AIDS/HIV, nuclear power, child protection, Y2K, electromagnetic fields, and waste incineration ...'. Social Science Newsletter