National Academies Press: OpenBook

Hazards: Technology and Fairness (1986)

Chapter: Public Perception of Risk

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Suggested Citation:"Public Perception of Risk." National Academy of Engineering. 1986. Hazards: Technology and Fairness. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/650.
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Page 124
Suggested Citation:"Public Perception of Risk." National Academy of Engineering. 1986. Hazards: Technology and Fairness. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/650.
×
Page 125
Suggested Citation:"Public Perception of Risk." National Academy of Engineering. 1986. Hazards: Technology and Fairness. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/650.
×
Page 126

Below is the uncorrected machine-read text of this chapter, intended to provide our own search engines and external engines with highly rich, chapter-representative searchable text of each book. Because it is UNCORRECTED material, please consider the following text as a useful but insufficient proxy for the authoritative book pages.

HAZARDOUS WASTE FACILITY SITING: COMMUNITY, FIRM, AND 124 GOVERNMENTAL PERSPECTIVES original typesetting files. Page breaks are true to the original; line lengths, word breaks, heading styles, and other typesetting-specific formatting, however, cannot be About this PDF file: This new digital representation of the original work has been recomposed from XML files created from the original paper book, not from the retained, and some typographic errors may have been accidentally inserted. Please use the print version of this publication as the authoritative version for attribution. initiative to ban the land disposal of hazardous waste, leaving, however, the siting of hazardous waste treatment facilities and radioactive waste disposal as continuing issues. Public Perception of Risk Whatever the actual public health and environmental risks posed by new facilities for disposal of hazardous waste, they undoubtedly pale in comparison with what the public believes they are. There can be no doubt that members of the public perceive substantial dangers from such facilities and are intensely concerned about them. Indeed, community responses to hazardous waste threats share similarities (as well as several key differences) with contagious hysteria (Schwartz et al., 1985). Intense concern is apparent in the controversy that nearly always erupts whenever search activities are conducted for a radioactive or other hazardous waste disposal facility. It is also apparent in the findings from a significant accumulation of polls, surveys, attitude studies, and psychometric research. A 1980 national poll conducted by Robert Mitchell at Resources for the Future (U. S. Council on Environmental Quality, 1980) found that only 10 to 12 percent of the American public would voluntarily live a mile or less from either a nuclear power plant or a hazardous waste disposal site, whereas 25 percent would accept a coal-fired power plant and nearly 60 percent a 10-story office building (Figure 4) at this distance. Further, majority acceptance for the hazardous waste disposal site occurred only at distances greater than 100 miles from the site despite assurances in the poll that the facility ''would be built and operated according to government environmental and safety regulations" and that "disposal could be done safely and that the site would be inspected regularly for possible problems" (U.S. Council on Environmental Quality, 1980, p. 30). Highly consistent with these results are those achieved using a similar approach in a recent study (Lindell and Earle, 1983) that assessed attitudes toward living near some eight different industrial facilities. Respondents rated each on 13 different risk dimensions and indicated the minimum distance they would be willing to live from each. The resulting attitude structure revealed three relatively distinct clusters (Figure 5). The least acceptable high-risk facility group included the nuclear waste and toxic chemical disposal facilities and the nuclear power plant. They were judged by respondents to pose a high threat to workers, the public, and future generations and to have risks that are less known and less preventable, are catastrophic, and are associated with many deaths over their operating life (Lindell and Earle, 1983, p.249). The factors underlying the perception of high danger and contributing to

About this PDF file: This new digital representation of the original work has been recomposed from XML files created from the original paper book, not from the original typesetting files. Page breaks are true to the original; line lengths, word breaks, heading styles, and other typesetting-specific formatting, however, cannot be retained, and some typographic errors may have been accidentally inserted. Please use the print version of this publication as the authoritative version for attribution. Figure 4 GOVERNMENTAL PERSPECTIVES installationsat various distances from their homes. HAZARDOUS WASTE FACILITY SITING: COMMUNITY, FIRM, AND SOURCE: U.S. Council on Environmental Quality (1980, p. 31). Cumulative percentage of people willing to accept new industrial 125

HAZARDOUS WASTE FACILITY SITING: COMMUNITY, FIRM, AND 126 GOVERNMENTAL PERSPECTIVES original typesetting files. Page breaks are true to the original; line lengths, word breaks, heading styles, and other typesetting-specific formatting, however, cannot be About this PDF file: This new digital representation of the original work has been recomposed from XML files created from the original paper book, not from the retained, and some typographic errors may have been accidentally inserted. Please use the print version of this publication as the authoritative version for attribution. fear of hazardous waste facilities are not well understood, but substantial insight is afforded in the psychometric studies of risk perception. Psychologists at Decision Research, Inc., have conducted a series of experiments on attitudes toward risky technologies and activities and have published a number of findings of direct importance to understanding public response in this area: Figure 5 Acceptance scale for eight different facilities in two surveys. Upper data from 1981; lower data from 1978. SOURCE: From Lindell and Earle (1983, p. 249). • Although members of the public can order risks from highest to lowest in terms of expected fatalities reasonably well, there are striking discrepancies (as for nuclear power, for example). These discrepancies appear to be related to qualitative attributes of risk, such as dread, likelihood that a mishap would be fatal, and catastrophic potential of the hazard. • Perceived risk is influenced (and sometimes biased) by the imaginability and memorability of the hazard. • Particular technologies are viewed as having enormous disaster potentials, which contribute to the perception that they are risky technologies and to strong public concern about them (Slovic et al., 1982). The various opinion surveys suggest that radioactive and other hazardous wastes share many of the attributes associated with particularly feared technologies—they are dread, relatively ''new" hazards, seen as likely to be fatal, and viewed as having catastrophic potential. These views have been shaped by highly memorable events—such as the leaks at low-level radioactive waste sites, Love Canal, and the extensive media coverage of the Superfund cleanup program. It is likely that many individuals fail to distinguish between the indiscriminate past dumping of wastes and the proposed new waste repositories. Further, since substantial evidence indicates that people's beliefs change slowly and are extraordinarily persistent in the face of contrary evidence (Slovic et al., 1982) "unscaring" people, to use Weinberg's (1977, p. 55) term, through the provision of information will prove extraordinarily difficult. Meanwhile, each new additional waste site discovery and each of the mishaps certain to occur in the network of new sites will

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"In the burgeoning literature on technological hazards, this volume is one of the best," states Choice in a three-part approach, it addresses the moral, scientific, social, and commercial questions inherent in hazards management. Part I discusses how best to regulate hazards arising from chronic, low-level exposures and from low-probability events when science is unable to assign causes or estimate consequences of such hazards; Part II examines fairness in the distribution of risks and benefits of potentially hazardous technologies; and Part III presents practical lessons and cautions about managing hazardous technologies. Together, the three sections put hazard management into perspective, providing a broad spectrum of views and information.

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