This award supports a cooperative research project between Dr. Paul Slovic of the Decision Science Research Institute in Eugene, Oregon and Professor Hirotada Hirose, Department of Psychology, Tokyo Women's Christian University. Specifically it supports an initial working group meeting between the U.S. and Japanese researchers on a project entitled "Comparisons of Risk Attitudes and Perceptions." This project is also supported by a grant from the NSF Decision, Risk, and Management Science Program. It is an ambitious project to address an important issue of national consequence. Although the United States and Japan are highly industrialized countries, their approaches to managing technological risks are quite different. The United States relies primarily on a "confrontational model" characterized by adversarial relationships between interested parties, widespread public participation, and extensive use of the legal system. The Japanese system, in comparison, is based on a "cooperative model" centered upon private negotiations between government and industry with an emphasis on consensus building. The investigators in the cooperative study hypothesize that these contrasting approaches are reflected in major differences in public attitudes and perceptions of risk in general and risk management in particular. The investigators will examine these differences by carrying out parallel studies of risk attitudes and risk perceptions in both countries. They will draw upon their extensive prior experience in analyzing the components of risk in various populations. In addition to providing information that will be relevant to future interactions between the two countries, this comparison will increase basic understanding of national risk-management styles and approaches.
