ENST20001 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Risk Perception, Environmental Policy
24 May 2018
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LECTURE 6: RISK & TRUST IN
ACCEPTABILITY OF ENV POLICY
• Social acceptability: favourable or unfavourable evaluation of a policy, result of a judgement process by
individuals, influenced by many factors (related to people's values)
• Social acceptability of policies - why it's important
o Ensures good decisions are made that include concerns of citizens
o Good environmental policy is legitimate, accountable, transparent
Risk
• Risk: about the nature of uncertainty
o Very different forms of how knowledge are brought to understanding this
o Different faculties approach differently
o Psychology: perceptive view of risk, look at the individuals - how risks are understood are socially
constructed
• Risk in env management - two which are contrasted
o Scientific/technical view
• Assessed by experts, an objective function of probability
o Social science view (risk perception)
• Perception of risk is subjective, and therefore value laden
• Public perception of risk drives government action
o Consequence for policy making prioritizes public perception over science
• Risk is value laden
o Individuals take into consideration more factors than science does
o Stakeholders consider risk differently
• Risk perceptions that are viewed as irrational may be more strongly related to cultural values than to
science literacy
• Beliefs about risks and benefits of management techniques are important in social acceptability
judgements
Protection Motivation Theory
• Cognitive processes between communication of a threat to an individual and how they behave in
response
• Appeals to fear, then have to assess threat - sense of consequences, and probability of it occurring
Trust
• Different definitions, can be seen as:
o Trust as a psychological state
o Trust as a behavioural choice
o Trust as relational
o Trust as a rational choice
• Trust occurs within a social setting, includes thought, feeling and action
• Trust is beneficial as it allows cooperation between groups, reduces need to mointor behaviour of others
• In social acceptability: trust in management agencies is known to mediate the relationship between
values and social acceptability
o Trust includes: salient value similarity, and perceived competence of management agencies
• Trust in managers lead to positive belief of outcome, and therefore positive social acceptability
