A New Decision Method for Public Opinion Crisis with the Intervention of Risk Perception of the Public

Abstract

Decision-making for selecting response plans problem (SRPP) has been widely concerning to scholars. However, most of the existing studies on this problem are focused on public emergencies, and little attention has been paid to the decision-makers’ urgent need for solving the SRPP in response to public opinion crisis (POC) that may lead to panic buying of materials derived from public emergencies. POC has obvious characteristics of group behaviors that directly resulted from panics and psychological appeals of the public. Therefore, for solving the SRPP in POC, it is necessary to consider the deep-seated cause that result in panics and psychological appeals of the public, i.e., risk perception of the public (RPP). Firstly, the multicase study is employed to describe the SRPP of POC, and thus eight typical cases are chosen to analyze POC and its relevant response measures. Then, the RPP is described with prospect theory through considering the behavioral characteristics and critical sense of the public, the response measures of decision-makers, and the importance and ambiguity of POC. Further, considering the behavioral characteristics of decision-makers and the impact of alternative response plans on the evolution of POC scenarios, a new decision method for solving the SRPP with the intervention of the RPP is proposed by using cumulative prospect theory and a manner of comparing alternatives for each other. Finally, an example is given to illustrate the potential application and effectiveness of the proposed method.