Abstract
Risk communication helps companies, governments and institutions minimize disputes, resolve issues and anticipate problems before they result in an irreversible breakdown in communications. Without good risk communication and good risk management, policy-makers have no road map to guide them through unforeseen problems which frequently derail the best policies and result in a breakdown in communications and a loss of trust among those they are trying hardest to persuade. Most policy-makers still use outdated methods — developed at a time before health scares such as BSE, genetically modified organisms and uranium-tipped shells eroded public confidence in industry and government — to communicate policies and achieve their objectives. Good risk communication is still possible, however. In this book, through the use of a host of case studies, I identify a series of methods that are being used in a post-trust society. That said, there is no such thing as a formula for risk communication. The same risk communication strategy may have different outcomes depending on the audience, the country, and context in which it is used. A strategy for managing risk in the USA, for example, may be wholly inappropriate in a European context.
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Notes and References
For a more detailed discussion regarding this example see Ragnar E. Löfstedt, ‘Risk and regulation: boat owners’ perceptions to recent anti-fouling legislation’, Risk Management an International Journal, 3:3 (2001), 33–46.
See for example, House of Lords, Select Committee on Science and Technology, Science and Society (London: The Stationery Office, 2001);
National Research Council (NRC), Improving Risk Communication (Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 1989);
NRC, Understanding Risk (Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 1996);
Royal Commission for Environmental Pollution (RCEP), Setting Environmental Standards (London: The Stationery Office, 1998);
Strategy Unit, Risk: Improving Government’s Capability to Handle Risk and Uncertainty (London: Strategy Unit, Cabinet Office, 2002).
For a good discussion of this see Susan D. Pharr and Robert D. Putnam (eds), Disaffected Democracies: What’s Troubling the Trilateral Countries? (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000).
See, for example, Ronald Inglehart, Culture Shift in Advanced Industrial Society (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990);
Sheila Jasanoff, The Fifth Branch: Science Advisors as Policy Makers (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990);
Ragnar E. Löfstedt and David Vogel, ‘The changing character of regulation: A comparison of Europe and the United States’, Risk Analysis, 21:3 (2001), 399–405,
Joseph S. Nye Jr, P.D. Zelikow and D.C. King, Why People Don’t Trust Government (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997);
and Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone (New York: Basic Books, 2000).
Paul Slovic, ‘Perceived risk, trust and democracy’, Risk Analysis, 13:6 (1993), 675–82.
Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990).
Stephen Breyer, Breaking the Vicious Circle: Toward Effective Risk Regulation (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993);
C. Coglianese, ‘The limits of consensus: the environmental protection system in transition: toward a more desirable future’, Environment, 41:3 (1999), 1–6.
NRC, Understanding Risk; RCEP, Setting Environmental Standards; Ortwin Renn, ‘A model for an analytic-deliberative process in risk management’, Environmental Science and Technology, 33:18 (1999), 3,049–55.
Robert A. Kagan and Lee Axelrad, Regulatory Encounters: Multinational Corporations and American Adversarial Legalism (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2000);
Steven Kelman, Regulating America, Regulating Sweden: A Comparative Study of Occupational Safety and Health Policy (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1981);
Leif Lewin, Bråka inte! Om vår tids demokratisyn (Do not fight: About our time’s view on democracy) (Stockholm: SNS Forlag, 1998);
David Vogel, National Styles of Regulation: Environmental Policy in Great Britain and the United States (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1986).
Carnegie Commission on Science, Technology and Government, Risk and the Environment: Improving Regulatory Decision Making (Washington, DC: Carnegie Commission, 1993).
Breyer, Closing the Vicious Circle; William D. Ruckelshaus, ‘Science, risk and public policy’, Science, 221 (1983) 1,026–8;
William D. Ruckelshaus, ‘Risk, science, and democracy’, Issues in Science and Technology, 1:3 (1985), 19–38.
Sören Holmberg and Lennart Weibull (eds), Ett missnöjt folk? (An unhappy people?) (Gothenburg: SOM Institute, Department of Political Science, University of Gothenburg, 1997); House of Lords, Science and Society; Pharr and Putnam, Disaffected Democracies. This is particularly strong in Europe lately due to food safety scares such as BSE (‘mad cow disease’) and foot and mouth disease.
Richard H. Pildes and Cass R. Sunstein, ‘Reinventing the regulatory state’, University of Chicago Law Review, 62:1 (1995), 1–129; RCEP, Setting Environmental Standards.
Roderic M. Kramer and Tom R. Tyler, Trust in Organizations: Frontiers of Theory and Research (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1996).
Timothy Earle and George Cvetkovich, Social Trust: Toward a Cosmopolitan Society (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1995).
Ortwin Renn and Deborah Levine, ‘Credibility and trust in risk communication’, in Roger E. Kasperson and Peter Jan Stallen (eds), Communicating Risks to the Public: International Perspectives (Amsterdam: Kluwer, 1991).
Robert W. Hahn, (ed.), Risks, Costs and Lives Saved: Getting Better Results from Regulation (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996);
W. Kip Viscusi, Rational Risk Policy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998).
For a good review see Paul Slovic, ‘Perception of risk’, Science, 236 (1987), 280–5.
R. Brickman, S. Jasanoff and T. Ilgen, ‘Controlling Chemicals: The politics of regulation in Europe and the united states’ (Ithaca, Cornell University Press 1985); Kelman, Regulating Sweden, Regulating United States.
Ragnar E. Löfstedt, ‘Risk communication: The Barsebäck nuclear plant case’, Energy Policy, 24:8 (1996), 689–96; Slovic, ‘Perceived risk, trust and democracy’.
It should be noted that these findings have been challenged by Lennart Sjöberg in his article, ‘Perceived competence and motivation in industry and government as factors in risk perception’, in George Cvetkovich and Ragnar E. Löfstedt (eds), Social Trust and the Management of Risk (London: Earthscan, 1999).
For an excellent discussion on this topic see Aaron Wildavsky, Searching for Safety (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1988).
See, for example, Chris Hohenemser, Roger E. Kasperson and Rober W. Kates, ‘The distrust of nuclear power’, Science, 196 (1977), 25–34.
NRC, Understanding Risk; RCEP, Setting Environmental Standards. For good overviews on the findings in the trust literature please consult George Cvetkovich and Ragnar E. Löfstedt (eds), Social Trust and the Management of Risk (London: Earthscan, 1999);
Earle and Cvetkovich, Social Trust: Toward a Cosmopolitan Society; Diego Gambetta, Trust: Making and Breaking Cooperative Relations (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988);
Roger E. Kasperson, Dominic Golding and Seth Tuler, ‘Siting hazardous facilities and communicating risks under conditions of high social distrust’, Journal of Social Issues, 48 (1992), 161–72;
and Barbara A. Misztal, Trust in Modern Societies (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1996).
See for example, Richard J. Lazarus, ‘The tragedy of distrust in the implementation of federal environmental law’, Law and Contemporary Problems, 54 (1991), 311–74.
Douglas Powell and William Leiss, Mad Cows and Mother’s Milk: The Perils of Poor Risk Communication (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1997).
An example of this was the recent ‘Ghost ship debacle’ in the UK. For a detailed discussion see Ragnar E. Löfstedt, How can better Risk Management lead to greater Public Trust in Canadian Institutions: Some Sobering lessons from Europe (London: King’s Centre for Risk Management, 2004).
See, for example, Ragnar E. Löfstedt, ‘Evaluation of two siting strategies: the case of two UK waste tyre incinerators’, Risk: Health Safety and Environment, 8:1 (1997), 63–77.
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© 2005 Ragnar E. Löfstedt
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Löfstedt, R.E. (2005). Introduction and Overview. In: Risk Management in Post-Trust Societies. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230503946_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230503946_1
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