McDaniels T L, Axelrod L J, Cavanagh N S, Slovic P
University of British Columbia, Westwater Research Centre, Vancouver, Canada.
Risk Anal. 1997 Jun;17(3):341-52. doi: 10.1111/j.1539-6924.1997.tb00872.x.
This paper examines lay and expert perceptions of the ecological risks associated with a range of human activities that could adversely affect water resource environments. It employs the psychometric paradigm pioneered in characterizing perceptions of human health risks, which involves surveys to obtain judgments from subjects about risk items in terms of several important characteristics of the risks. The paper builds on a previous study that introduced ecological risk perception. This second study employs a larger, more diverse sample, a more focused topic area, and comparisons between lay and expert judgments. The results confirm that a small set of underlying factors explain a great deal of variability in lay judgments about ecological risks. These have been termed Ecological Impact, Human Benefits, Controllability, and Knowledge. The results are useful in explaining subjects' judgments of the general riskiness of, and need for regulation of, various risk items. The results also indicate several differences and areas of agreement among the lay and expert samples that point to potential key issues in future ecological risk management efforts for water resources.
本文考察了公众和专家对一系列可能对水资源环境产生不利影响的人类活动所带来的生态风险的认知。它采用了在刻画人类健康风险认知方面开创的心理测量范式，该范式涉及通过调查从受试者那里获取关于风险项目在若干重要风险特征方面的判断。本文建立在之前一项引入生态风险认知的研究基础之上。第二项研究采用了更大、更多样化的样本，一个更聚焦的主题领域，以及公众与专家判断之间的比较。结果证实，一小部分潜在因素解释了公众对生态风险判断中的大量变异性。这些因素被称为生态影响、人类益处、可控性和知识。这些结果有助于解释受试者对各种风险项目的总体风险程度以及监管必要性的判断。结果还表明了公众样本和专家样本之间的若干差异及共识领域，这些差异和共识指向了未来水资源生态风险管理工作中潜在的关键问题。
