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Risk Perception in Bulgaria and Romania

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Cross-Cultural Risk Perception

Part of the book series: Technology, Risk, and Society ((RISKGOSO,volume 13))

Summary

Risk perception and media risk content were studied in Bulgaria and Romania; results were compared to data obtained in other countries, most notably in Sweden and Brazil. Various groups were sampled for investigating risk perception: nurses, students of economics and engineering, teachers, unskilled workers and homeless people. They rated a large number of general and personal risks, probabilities and consequences of harm, and demand for risk mitigation. It was found that Bulgarian risk perception levels were quite high, on the same level as Brazil and higher than the US data available for comparison. The Romanian data showed considerably lower levels, almost at the level of Scandinavian countries. The differences in levels of perceived risk between Romania and Bulgaria cannot be explained by differences in levels of real risk; Romania was in a clearly more difficult economic situation than Bulgaria. Media contents are therefore suggested as a more potent determinant of perceived risk than real risk. Among detailed results we can also mention that engineering students, followed by MBA students, gave the lowest risk ratings throughout the study. Some homeless people gave, contrary to expectations, low ratings of perceived risk - this could be a function of their limited access to media. Confidence in institutions and media was throughout quite low both in Bulgaria and Romania, but lowest in Bulgaria.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Risk Research, Stockholm School of Economics, Stockholm, Sweden

    Lennart Sjöberg & Marie-Louise Bernström

  2. University of Sofia “St. Kl. Ohridski”, Sofia, Bulgaria

    Daniela Kolarova

  3. Romanian Academy of Sciences, Bucharest, Romania

    Alina-Anca Rucai

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  1. Lennart Sjöberg
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  2. Daniela Kolarova
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  3. Alina-Anca Rucai
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  4. Marie-Louise Bernström
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Technology Assessment, Stuttgart, Germany

    Ortwin Renn

  2. University of Melbourne, Australia

    Bernd Rohrmann

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Sjöberg, L., Kolarova, D., Rucai, AA., Bernström, ML. (2000). Risk Perception in Bulgaria and Romania. In: Renn, O., Rohrmann, B. (eds) Cross-Cultural Risk Perception. Technology, Risk, and Society, vol 13. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-4891-8_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-4891-8_4

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4419-4961-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4757-4891-8

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