Public benefit and risk perceptions of nanotechnology development: Psychological and sociological aspects

Nanotechnology enables the development of new and improved products. However, the public is also concerned about uncertain risks associated with nanotechnology-enabled products. To address this concern, the study aims to expand the understanding about public benefit and risk perceptions as a basis for the effective formulation of policy that addresses public interests. The study investigates public benefit and risk perceptions of nanotechnology development from the psychological and sociological aspects through a questionnaire survey conducted on Klang Valley, Malaysia. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) illustrates that demographics indeed influences public benefit and risk perceptions of nanotechnology development. However, public knowledge about nanotechnology exerts no effect on public benefit and risk perceptions of nanotechnology development based on independent t-tests. Simple linear regression reveals that the lack of public trust in government increases risk perception. Public attitude perceives nanotechnology to be more beneficial than risky, thus influencing benefit perception rather than risk perception. Public lifestyle, such as culture, religious beliefs and social group influence benefit perception but not risk perception. Result is expected to deliver better communication of benefit and risk of nanotechnology to the public as well as ensure an ethical policy regarding nanotechnology development.     

Getting beyond ‘grin and bear it’ in the practice of risk management

Risk perception researchers frequently notice major discrepancies between expert judgment and lay opinion concerning the identity of ‘large’ risks. These discrepancies are particularly disconcerting because they lead to a significant misallocation of scarce resources devoted to public risk management. Yet, democratic decision-making also appeals to many risk perception researchers, and some see such little prospect for a solution thaty they seem close to surrendering to decision-making based on lay risk perception. This article argues that such a ‘grin and bear it’ strategy is also unsatisfactory; that risk perceptions are unstable grounds for decision-making; that expert risk assessment and lay risk perception differ by design rather than accident; that risk experts' search for ‘virtuous lawmakers’ who would make public decisions for the greatest public good is a vain one; that the dissonance risk perception researchers now observe will likely get worse in the new information age; and that risk perception researchers need to return to first principles to find solutions to these dilemmas. In particular, the gap between expert judgment and lay perception will close only when non-experts are permitted and expected to make their own risk management decisions, so far as that is possible, while bearing full responsibility for their choices.     

The role of risk perception and technical information in scientific debates over nuclear waste storage

This article examines how members of the lay public factor risk perceptions, trust and technical information from differing scientific sources into policy judgements about potentially hazardous facilities. Focusing on radwaste storage repositories, we examine how members of the public filter new information about potential hazards through risk perceptions, and adjust their own beliefs about risks in light of that information. Scientists play a large (and increasing) role in public policy debates concerning nuclear waste issues, in which public perceptions of human health and environmental risks often differ substantially from scientific consensus about those risks. Public concerns and uncertainties are compounded when scientists from competing groups (government agencies, scientific institutions, industries, and interest groups) make different claims about the likely health and environmental consequences of different policy options. We show the processes by which the public receive and process scientific information about nuclear waste management risks using data taken from interviews with 1800 randomly selected individuals (1200 in New Mexico, and 600 nationwide). Among the more important findings are: (1) members of the public are able to make quite reasonable estimates about what kinds of positions on the risks of nuclear waste disposal will be taken by scientists from differing organizations (e.g. scientists from environmental groups, government agencies, or the nuclear industry); (2) in assessing the credibility of scientific claims, members of the public place great emphasis on the independence of the scientists from those who fund the research; and (3) prior expectations about the positions (or expected biases) of scientists from different organizations substantially affects the ways in which members of the public weigh (and utilize) information that comes from these scientists.     

Risk assessment, risk values and the social science programme: why we do need risk perception research

The paper poses the question of whether the findings from social science research on risk perception could (or indeed should) find direct application in the domains of risk regulation and management. The problem this poses, of balancing and integrating the best available scientific judgements and evidence on the one hand with aspects of public risk evaluations on the other, is one of the most difficult questions to be faced by democratic governments and their regulators today. The paper argues that the findings from risk perception research do hold implications for the ways in which risk analysis and regulation should be done. Current social science research on risk perceptions is discussed together with existing UK regulatory policy, which allows, to a certain extent, contextual issues to be factored into risk tolerability decision making. The paper concludes by presenting a set of arguments both for and against the use of risk perceptions in policy. Brief conclusions are drawn regarding the conditions under which public preferences and values might be optimally elicited.     

Public perception of nanotechnology: A contrast between developed and developing countries

Nanotechnology is an emerging technology that has many proven applications and holds potential in many sectors. At the same time, the general public's lack of awareness about nanotechnology might polarize risk perception about this technology. Public discourse and upstream engagement are necessary for policymaking and responsible development of any emerging technology. While emerging countries have now joined the discussion on the public perception of emerging technologies just like the developed countries, yet there has been no review comparing the nanotechnology perception among developing and developed nations. This article presents a systematic review of factors influencing public perception and their attitude towards nanotechnology in developed and developing countries based on research papers published during 2001–2020. We have provided an in-depth comparative account of developed and developing countries in terms of factors affecting public perception of nanotechnology, namely –risk-benefit, knowledge, trust in science, religiosity, and demographics. In addition, we have also provided a contrast on how media representation of nanotechnology (newspaper coverage and social media) varies in developing countries compared to developed nations.     

Taming monsters: The cultural domestication of new technology

Central to public discomfort about new technologies is the notion that they are unnatural. Experts often suppose that better knowledge of technology and risks would help overcome public aversion. This assumption turns out to be fairly fruitless, often even increasing social polarization. The pattern of diverging risk assessments about technology might be improved by a better understanding of the moral gut feelings at stake. However, current technology ethics does not seem to be equipped for elaborating theories to explain public discomfort. Either public fear is not taken seriously, or ethical–theoretical rationalizations of moral intuitions lead to unsatisfactory, naturalist constructions, such as the intrinsic value of nature.For a better understanding of current risk controversies, a detour is made to the cultural anthropology of Mary Douglas on pre-modern ideas regarding danger. This offers some clarifying insights into modern perceptions of technological risks. Departing from anthropological observations, a so-called monster theory is sketched, which gives an explanation for the fascination with and aversion towards new technology, leaving aside ‘naturalist’ and ‘nature-skeptic’ explanations of technology ethics. Monster theory offers a point of departure for a new, pragmatic approach to controversies about new technology, the approach being named a pragmatist monster-ethics. It tells us we have to reflect on and shift cultural categories as well as to adapt technologies in order to domesticate our technological ‘monsters’.     

Exploring responsible innovation: Dutch public perceptions of the future of medical neuroimaging technology

Insight into public perceptions provides opportunities to take public desires and concerns into account in an early phase of innovation development in order to maximise the potential benefits for users of the future. Public perceptions of neuroimaging in health care are presented in this article, based on research undertaken in the Netherlands. In six focus groups, 46 citizens articulated benefits, disadvantages and specific concerns regarding future medical neuroimaging applications. Six technological frames of neuroimaging and three frames of the socio-technical system surrounding neuroimaging were found to underlie the arguments used to articulate the degree of desirability of future applications. Depending on the context, individuals use different frames and related lines of arguments. New and improved options for the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of brain disorders are considered conditionally desirable by almost all citizens consulted. The desirability of neuroimaging applications becomes controversial when specific applications embody conflicting values and desires. Depending on the weight given to these different values and desires, the application is perceived as desirable or undesirable. It appears that concerns regarding the endorsed values of certainty and naturalness are preferred to desired states as control over life and risk avoidance. As a consequence, enhancement options and options to determine a predisposition and to diagnose mental disorders might be considered controversial. The identified different perspectives and concerns are a suitable starting point for processes aiming at the identification of more responsible future directions and related applications of medical neuroimaging.     

Political decisions and public risk perception

Should the public's risk perception be an input into political and administrative decision making? It is clear that it does have an influence, but perhaps not to the extent of explaining all, or even most, of the tremendous inconsistencies in the allocation of resources for risk mitigation. Risk perception models could be of help to understand such phenomena, but contemporary models of risk perception have been misleading and their weaknesses are discussed. Similarly, experts' risk perception has been asserted to be very different from that of the public but that is argued here to be a mistaken opinion. Should we let the experts run risk policy? Several arguments against this idea are put forward here, the most important being that the whole issue is one of democracy. Those who are unhappy about the decisions made by the government can always argue their case and maybe gain political power to change things. This is as true of risk policy as it is of everything else.     

Perceptions of public participation in impact assessment: a study of offshore oil exploration in Greenland

Oil exploration presently takes place offshore NW of Greenland. The recent entry of the oil industry in this sparsely populated area carries the potential for radical and unpredictable societal change. To ensure local adaptation, Public participation (PP) is implemented as a legal requirement in environmental impact assessment of offshore oil exploration. However, NGOs and associations, industry and individuals in Greenland express general frustration of how PP is conducted. This paper presents an analysis of stakeholders' PP perceptions and their implications in Greenland. It is found that differences in PP purpose perceptions among stakeholders cause disagreement on what is considered good performance. Furthermore, the stakeholders disagree on the desired level of engagement. While NGOs emphasise a need for PP to influence decision-making, the public seems to accept a role as passive recipients of information about decisions already made. This leads to a discussion about the need for a more specific PP guideline based on dialogue among stakeholders, with emphasis on the cultural barriers related to power structures and communication.     

New vistas for technology and risk assessment? The OECD Programme on Emerging Systemic Risks and beyond

This paper presents a framework for understanding risk from the perspective of technological innovation and change. Special focus is put on systemic technological change, which tends to affect several dimensions of society at the same time. By drawing on innovation theory, and exemplifying by reference to the OECD futures project on Emerging Systemic Risk, the article elaborates a framework for technology assessment where the central elements are ubiquitous technological change and risk. Several key dimensions for technology assessment of this kind are identified, including increased mobility of people and goods, magnitude and concentration of humans, the speed and depth of change in the risk landscape, public to private shifts in the ‘ownership’ of risk, and the role played by expectations and perception to risk. The article ends with suggesting a number of new norms for risk and technology assessment coupled with new risk methodologies for further investigation.     

城市公园植物景观配置的声景效应研究

植物景观是城市公园设计的重要内容,是游客游览体验的重要媒介。通过对福州市5个城市公园的实地调研和公众问卷调查,探究不同植物配置模式下游客声景感知的差异特征及其影响因素。结果表明：不同植物配置模式下,对音乐声、广播声和交通声的优势度与和谐度感知存在显著差异,其中镶嵌式和疏林式两种配置模式之间的差异最为明显。阶梯式和镶嵌式植物配置模式下,总体声景感知的愉悦度和丰富度评价较高,而疏林式最低,且受声源感知影响最为明显。音乐声感知特征、植物景观色彩度与植物群落围合度对总体声景感知影响最为显著。研究结果从植物景观配置角度为提升城市公园声景品质提供了理论参考。     

The role of risk perception for risk management

Are risks social constructions of different societal actors that can be checked at best against standards of consistency, cohesion and internal conventions of deduction, but cannot claim any validity outside of the actor's logical framework? Or are technical estimates of risk representations of real hazards that can and will affect people as predicted by the statistical values, regardless of the beliefs or convictions of those who conduct the assessments? Which of the two sides one takes determines the legitimate function of risk perception for management purposes. The paper argues that both extremes, the constructivist and the realist perspective, miss the point, as risks are always mental representations of threats that are capable of claiming real losses. Over the last two decades, risk analysts have dealt with both sides of risk in an additive fashion. In times in which risk management has been under serious pressure to demonstrate effectiveness and cost-efficiency, the parallel approach of pleasing the technical elite and the public alike has lost legitimacy. In order to integrate risk assessment and perception, the paper analyses the strengths and weaknesses of each approach to risk analysis and highlights the potential contributions that the technical sciences and the social sciences can offer to risk management. Technical assessments provide the best estimate for judging the average probability of an adverse effect linked to an object or activity. First, public perception should govern the selection of criteria on which acceptability or tolerability are to be judged. Second, public input is needed to determine the trade-offs between criteria. Third, public preferences are needed to design resilient strategies for coping with remaining uncertainties. A public participation model is introduced that promises an integration of analytic knowledge and deliberative process involving those who will be affected by the respective risk.     

Sustainable Supply Model Design of Public Rental Housing —Case Study of Chongqing

Public rental housing is an important governmental project. Within the next three years, Chongqing municipal government proposes building 40×10⁶ m² of public rental housing to solve the housing problem for 2 million people. Many problems of sustainability have happened in long-term large-scale construction, including gradually-slow renting progress, the shortage of funds, public rental housing community facilities are retrograde, and the selected sites are at the city’s edge. This paper analyzes the Chongqing public rental housing situation from the perspective of sustainable public rental housing supply, putting forward a sustainable supply model that is suitable for Chongqing, and then calculates their portion.     

Regulating safety in an unsafe world (risk reduction for and with communities)

Safety regulators and the public they serve often have contrasting views on risk perception and the veracity of institutional estimates of risk and harm. Conflict and distrust between these groups is often a result of a lack of public involvement in decision making on safety related matters. Such concerns also emerge from differences in professional training, authority and experience between the groups. Fire services internationally, carryout fire safety assessments on behalf of communities. This assessment role is unusual in that unlike conventional approaches to regulatory safety assessment, fire fighters are direct end-users of their own regulatory assessment and closer to the people they protect. This paper discusses how fire services are beginning to seek closer links with communities by defining clear regulatory frameworks for conventional safety assessments and conceptual frameworks that allow a redefinition of their role towards establishing partnerships with communities to promote sustained safety.     

Sustainable Supply Model Design of Public Rental Housing —Case Study of Chongqing

Public rental housing is an important governmental project. Within the next three years, Chongqing municipal government proposes building 40×10⁶ m² of public rental housing to solve the housing problem for 2 million people. Many problems of sustainability have happened in long-term large-scale construction, including gradually-slow renting progress, the shortage of funds, public rental housing community facilities are retrograde, and the selected sites are at the city’s edge. This paper analyzes the Chongqing public rental housing situation from the perspective of sustainable public rental housing supply, putting forward a sustainable supply model that is suitable for Chongqing, and then calculates their portion.     

Using mental mapping to unpack perceived cycling risk

Cycling is the most energy-efficient mode of transport and can bring extensive environmental, social and economic benefits. Research has highlighted negative perceptions of safety as a major barrier to the growth of cycling. Understanding these perceptions through the application of novel place-sensitive methodological tools such as mental mapping could inform measures to increase cyclist numbers and consequently improve cyclist safety. Key steps to achieving this include: (a) the design of infrastructure to reduce actual risks and (b) targeted work on improving safety perceptions among current and future cyclists.This study combines mental mapping, a stated-preference survey and a transport infrastructure inventory to unpack perceptions of cycling risk and to reveal both overlaps and discrepancies between perceived and actual characteristics of the physical environment. Participants translate mentally mapped cycle routes onto hard-copy base-maps, colour-coding road sections according to risk, while a transport infrastructure inventory captures the objective cycling environment. These qualitative and quantitative data are matched using Geographic Information Systems and exported to statistical analysis software to model the individual and (infra)structural determinants of perceived cycling risk.This method was applied to cycling conditions in Galway City (Ireland). Participants’ (n = 104) mental maps delivered data-rich perceived safety observations (n = 484) and initial comparison with locations of cycling collisions suggests some alignment between perception and reality, particularly relating to danger at roundabouts. Attributing individual and (infra)structural characteristics to each observation, a Generalised Linear Mixed Model statistical analysis identified segregated infrastructure, road width, the number of vehicles as well as gender and cycling experience as significant, and interactions were found between individual and infrastructural variables. The paper concludes that mental mapping is a highly useful tool for assessing perceptions of cycling risk with a strong visual aspect and significant potential for public participation. This distinguishes it from more traditional cycling safety assessment tools that focus solely on the technical assessment of cycling infrastructure. Further development of online mapping tools is recommended as part of bicycle suitability measures to engage cyclists and the general public and to inform ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ cycling policy responses.     

Understanding the structure of risk belief systems concerning drone delivery: A network analysis

While e-commerce industries envision drones as a promising solution to the challenges associated with last-mile logistics of product delivery, there is increasing public concern over the risks of these airborne innovations. A growing number of studies seek to gauge the public's risk beliefs about drone delivery and inform policy development before its widespread uptake. Complicating these efforts is the fact that beliefs are interconnected and embedded in a cognitive system. This article argues that public outcomes are not based on atomized and isolated beliefs about risks involved in drone delivery, but instead emerge from the patterns in the relationships among these expressed beliefs. However, little is known about the structural characteristics of risk belief systems related to drone delivery, and the implications for risk communication and management. In an effort to fill this void, we conducted a network analysis of risk beliefs about drone delivery based on nationally representative data (N = 1465). The results revealed structural connections among 11 risk beliefs and explored structural variations in the risk belief system between people with different attitudes toward drone delivery. The simulation results showed that risk-mitigating messages instigated greater changes to the public's risk perceptions when they targeted structurally central, as opposed to peripheral, risk beliefs. The reported evidence adds new insights into how risks about drone delivery are configured in the public consciousness, and provides guidance into how practitioners may mobilize structural leverage to optimize the effectiveness and efficiency of risk communication strategies.     

Information technology in Chile: How perceptions and use are related to age, gender, and social class

A survey was conducted in two cities in Chile to determine the perceptions and use of information technology (IT) by people of different ages and genders, and from different social classes. The survey results show that the main variable influencing IT use and perception is social class: the higher a user's social class, the more positive their perception of IT and the more frequent their use. In contrast, age is generally inversely correlated to the perception and use of IT. In the case of gender, the data indicates that it has the least importance when explaining differences in use and perception of IT. Finally, the study found a “social halo effect” regarding people's perception of IT usefulness. In general, individuals perceive IT to be more useful for society at large than it is useful for them.     

A semi-quantitative approach to risk analysis, as an alternative to QRAs

In quantitative risk analysis (QRA) risk is quantified using probabilities and expected values, for example expressed by PLL values, FAR values, IR values and F–N curves. The calculations are tedious and include a strong element of arbitrariness. The value added by the quantification can certainly be questioned. In this paper, we argue that such analyses often are better replaced by semi-quantitative analyses, highlighting assessments of hazards and barriers, risk influencing factors (RIFs) and safety improvement measures. The assessments will be based on supporting information produced by risk analysts, including hard data and analyses of failure causes and mechanisms, barrier performance, scenario development, etc. The approach acknowledges that risk cannot be adequately described and evaluated simply by reference to summarising probabilities and expected values. There is a need for seeing beyond the standard probabilistic risk results of a QRA. Key aspects to include are related to uncertainties in phenomena and processes, and manageability factors. Such aspects are often ignored in standard QRAs.     

Science, technology and industrial development in India

India in its 40 years of independence has made great progress in science and technology and in industrial development. Education at all levels has expanded, and the number of colleges and universities has increased several-fold. Expenditures for research and development (R&D) have grown rapidly, with 85% of its support coming from government agencies. The four largest government programs for R&D are for Defense, Agriculture, Atomic Energy, and Space, and these four account for over 50% of the nation's R&D efforts. Under government encouragement, R&D by private industry has expanded rapidly, and now about equals the public sector industry in R&D expenditures. Industrial concerns, public and private, directly support about 30% of India's R&D.The impact of indegenous R&D on India's industry is growing, but both the public and private sectors of industry still rely principally on imported technologies. However, several new government “liberalisation” programs, aimed at enhancing the contributions of Indian research, for example by making it simpler and less costly to import research equipment, are now in place, and should expand India's research efforts, and their contributions to industry.