Comparative Risk Perception of Common Activities

Abstract

Research on risk perception has been motivated by a variety of practical and theoretical interests, from public policy making and consumer product litigation to psychophysics and cognitive psychology. This paper examines risk perception data for activities that are directly related to public safety. Vredenburgh and Cohen (1993, 1995) have conducted several studies in which subjects responded to risk questionnaires about recreational and work related activities. This paper provides analyses of the risk perception data not included in the previous reports from these studies. The perceived-risk ranks for the recreational and diverse activities are given. Subjects regarded hang gliding as the most dangerous activity and water-skiing as the least dangerous of these sports. Although the full 7-point scale was used by at least some subjects, the means all begin at the middle of the scale and ran towards the high-risk end. Taken at face value, the results of these questionnaires have direct applications to policy and legal issues.