Abstract
Risk assessment on technologies and social activities involves subjective judgments as one of its major components, which depends on the perception of risk by individuals. The present study tried to examine degree of difference in risk perception among different groups, by means of ordering of risks as perceived by individual subjects, and to find any effect of time by comparing the results of three separate trials that were made in 1983, 1992 and 2007.
We interviewed with people who are engaged in NIRS and asked them rank 30 items of various types of technologies and human activities according to their subjective judgments on the order of perceived magnitude of risk (Slovic et al 1981). We undertook the similar survey of public perception in all parts of Japan using web-based questionnaires and 638 responses were obtained. We asked them about occupations, academic carriers, families, information sources and safety of daily lives.
In general, the risk perceptions of female clerical staffs (e.g., secretaries and research assistants) and researchers have got similar closely during 25 years, although there was a difference in the trend of perception of nuclear between them. The formers have consistently judged nuclear power as most risky, whereas its rank judged by researchers fluctuated with social events such as Chernobyl accident. The orders of motor vehicle fell during 25 years. The orders of health risk sources with low exposure (food preservatives, food coloring, X-rays, antibiotics, etc) transiently rose in 1992 survey. Unexpectedly, the web-survey indicated that Japanese public perceived risk similarly irrespective of sex, age, occupation and so on. They judged handguns, nuclear power and smoking as most risky.
