Attitudes to Technology and Risk: Going Beyond What Is Immediately Given. Lennart Sjöberg, Stockholm Center of Economics, Sweden
Risk perception data are related to technology and technology attributes, in particular to the possibility to replace a technology, and to the belief that there may be as yet unknown effects, and effects involving a destructive relationship with Nature. These kinds of contextual characteristics of a hazard are shown empirically to yield powerful explanatory force to the risk perception and technology attitude models. Risk as a property of an activity is distinguished from risk as a property of an unwanted consequence (injury); the latter being clearly more important for policy attitudes. It is also found that the operational definition of risk and trust is an important factor in determining the relationship between these two concepts; attitude scale items yielding a much stronger relationship between risk and trust than the more traditional ratings scales for these concepts. Detailed study of gene technology and nuclear power showed that these hazards were particularly amenable to mapping with risk perception concepts of the kind applied here. In the case of gene technology it is also found that consumer intentions display much the same risk perception dynamics as policy attitudes.
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