Individuals may have biased perceptions of health and safety risks. We conjecture perceptions of mortality risk from various risk measures using parametric and non-parametric methods. We investigate how risk perceptions are measured and what rational explanations can be found for these measures.

Environmental insecurity is a source and outcome of biodiversity declines and social conflict. One challenge to scaling insecurity reduction policies is that empirical evidence about local attitudes is overwhelmingly missing. We set three objectives: determine how local people rank risk associated with different sources of environmental insecurity; assess perceptions of environmental insecurity...

Understanding emerging trends in public perceptions of nanomaterials is critically important for those who regulate risks. A number of surveys have explored public perceptions of their risks and benefits. In this paper we meta-analyse these surveys to assess the extent to which the following four hypotheses derived from previous studies of new technologies might be said to be valid for nanotech...

BACKGROUND Accurate perceptions of future cardiac risk are important to ensure informed treatment choices and lifestyle adaptation in patients following myocardial infarction (MI). The aim of this study was to investigate whether risk perceptions of patients with MI were accurate compared with an established clinical risk model. METHODS Seventy-nine consecutive patients with acute MI admitted...

This paper examines the effect of financial risk on perceptions of service quality and relationship-marketing quality in the online retail environment. Perceptions of financial risk were found to be negatively associated with service quality. In particular, a well-designed and attractive Web site was found to mitigate perceptions of financial risk during early trial-buy purchasing. Relationship...

Mistaken perception of teratogenic risk can keep pregnant women from using safe medicines. The current study analyzed women's concepts and perceptions towards teratogenic risk from medicines and exposure to radiotherapy during pregnancy. The quantitative data resulted from interviews with 287 pregnant and non-pregnant women. Two qualitative focus groups were conducted. No significant difference...

BACKGROUND Risk perceptions are central to many health behavior theories. However, the relationship between risk perceptions and behavior, muddied by instances of inappropriate assessment and analysis, often looks weak. METHOD A meta-analysis of eligible studies assessing the bivariate association between adult vaccination and perceived likelihood, susceptibility, or severity was conducted. ...

This paper considers the institutional factors that shape regulatory officials’ perceptions of risks to human health and safety and their attitudes towards associated regulation. In particular, the paper considers the extent to which the perceptions of risk and regulation of officials responsible for monitoring and enforcement are aligned with regulatory requirements, and, if not, what factors ...

This paper (1) appraises The Chronicle of Philanthropy’s widely disseminated and reported indices ranking states on their relative level of charitable giving, and (2) presents a different set of rankings based on a more valid research methodology, what we call the CWP (Center on Wealth and Philanthropy) Index. Our more precise methods raise important questions for the community of nonprofit sch...

Computing with Words (CW) methodology has been used in several different environments to narrow the differences between human reasoning and computing. As Decision Making is a typical human mental process, it seems natural to apply the CW methodology in order to create and enrich decision models in which the information that is provided and manipulated has a qualitative nature. In this paper we ...