Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) , Karlsruhe , Germany.
University of Wollongong , Wollongong, NSW , Australia.
Front Public Health. 2015 Jan 13;2:289. doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2014.00289. eCollection 2014.
The presented study is part of the EU-Project Low EMF Exposure Future Networks (LEXNET), which deals among other things with the issue of whether a reduction of the radiofrequency (RF) electro-magnetic fields (EMF) exposure will result in more acceptance of wireless communication networks in the public sphere. We assume that the effects of any reduction of EMF exposure will depend on the subjective link between exposure perception and risk perception (RP). Therefore we evaluated respondents' RP of different RF EMF sources and their subjective knowledge about various exposure characteristics with regard to their impact on potential health risks. The results show that participants are more concerned about base stations than about all other RF EMF sources. Concerning the subjective exposure knowledge the results suggest that people have a quite appropriate impact model. The question how RF EMF RP is actually affected by the knowledge about the various exposure characteristics was tested in a linear regression analysis. The regression indicates that these features - except distance - do influence people's general RF EMF RP. In addition, we analyzed the effect of the quality of exposure knowledge on RF EMF RP of various sources. The results show a tendency that better exposure knowledge leads to higher RP, especially for mobile phones. The study provides empirical support for models of the relationships between exposure perception and RP. It is not the aim to extrapolate these findings to the whole population because the samples are not exactly representative for the general public in the participating countries.
本研究是欧盟项目“低电磁辐射暴露未来网络（LEXNET）”的一部分，该项目除其他事项外，还涉及射频（RF）电磁场（EMF）暴露减少是否会导致公众更接受无线通信网络的问题。我们假设，任何 EMF 暴露减少的影响都将取决于暴露感知和风险感知（RP）之间的主观联系。因此，我们评估了受访者对不同 RF EMF 源的 RP 及其对潜在健康风险的各种暴露特征的主观知识。结果表明，参与者对基站的关注甚于其他所有 RF EMF 源。关于主观暴露知识，结果表明人们对影响模型有相当准确的认识。关于 RF EMF RP 是否受各种暴露特征的知识影响的问题，我们在线性回归分析中进行了测试。回归表明，这些特征（除距离外）确实会影响人们对 RF EMF 的普遍 RP。此外，我们还分析了暴露知识质量对各种来源的 RF EMF RP 的影响。结果表明，更好的暴露知识会导致更高的 RP，尤其是对于手机。这项研究为暴露感知和 RP 之间的关系模型提供了经验支持。由于样本不完全代表参与国的一般公众，因此我们的目的不是将这些发现推断到整个人口中。
