Rare catastrophic events have the possibility of altering people's behavior in risk-related decision making, which we should be able to capture as estimated changes in basic preference parameters. Whether large-scale natural disasters such as the Great East Japan Earthquake make people more (or less) risk averse would be of great interest to many social scientists.

The purpose of this paper is to provide empirical evidence on (1) whether catastrophic events affect the level of the absolute risk aversion (ARA) parameter, and (2) whether such effects on ARA (if any) are related to various individual characteristics such as age, gender, education, area of residence, financial literacy and financial assets. Our data set consists of panel data of 342 individuals measured both before and after the Great East Japan Earthquake. Our results suggest that the effects of the Earthquake on the level of the ARA parameter are not significant overall, although individuals with low financial literacy may have a weak tendency to increase their ARA in response to the Earthquake. We also find that the effects of wealth on ARA, surprisingly, have opposite signs depending on their level of financial literacy.

In this study, we overviewed the historical trends and characteristics of “regulatory science (RS)” and related concepts based on trilateral practical cases (i.e., Japan, the United States, and EU) in three fields (i.e., pharmaceutical affairs, food safety, and chemical management). We then compared RS with trans-science to highlight their practical roles. In the field of pharmaceutical affairs, the concept of RS was applied as science for assessment, regulation, or decision-making under the frame of international harmonization. In the field of food safety and chemical management, terms such as risk analysis were used for the methodologies to support the decision-making toward regulation in advance of RS. Overall, there is a commonality that the concepts of RS and other methodologies in these fields are used for solving decision-making problems, whereas trans-science highlights aspects of problems that science cannot solve. RS has an orientation of solution-focused approach, which is compatible with risk science.

A panel discussion with media was conducted in the 29^th annual meeting of SRA Japan. The panel discussed how to collaborate between media and experts on risk issues. The background of the panel discussion is as follows: Modern society is confronted with diverse risks. The role of media is to report news timely and clearly. Psychological and ethical aspects are closely related with risk although the risk is quantitative for uncertain information. The uncertain aspects with diverse views on risk issues have blocked the difficulties of media reports to help people act properly to face the risk. In order to solve the problems, we should continue to think how to collaborate between media and experts.

This symposium aims to discuss how to measure risk across some research fields. Risk is usually quantified by probability, a loss of time and a ratio with respect to the reference. These measures have been used for some purposes. Cancer risk assessment uses relative risk for estimating the association between exposure and health effects. We can know the absolute risk reduction of a targeted health effect, and also risk trade-off problem in chemical management. However, people perceive risks by not only intuition but also logical thinking. A time scale is an important element to express the risk from the viewpoint of human perception. This symposium discussed the need of risk measure fitted to the purpose and then emphasized consideration of not only social aspects but also psychology for risk comparison.