2009 Volume 29 Issue 6 Pages 255-264
Sometimes social reaction to incidents with health and medical risks grows unexpectedly Especially for stakeholders gripping on risk management, such as the government, companies and experts, it is increasingly important to precisely grasp how people are responding to an incident. The author's past study, therefore, developed an index that shows the magnitude of the social reaction derived from the amount of the news paper reports. Quantitative analysis with identical index made comparative study possible, and usability of the index was validated.
Comparative study was conducted to analyze the feature of social reactions towards different incidents using the index. Infection-related incidents and food-related incidents showed higher scores of the index, while incidents containing professional contents such as medical malpractice showed lower scores. And, infection-related incidents which are often reported continuously showed the opposite trend of the index from hospital-related incidents showed. The results showed that incidents related with people broadly can cause stronger social reaction.
