Topic l: Causal Knowledge about Environmental Risks

One of our research topics deals with lay concepts of the causes and consequences of environmental risks.
Four studies were conducted in order to investigate the following questions:
- Which environmental changes are considered as risks?
- What are the causes and consequences of particular environmental risks according to lay thinking?
- Do these causal concepts influence risk perception?

The studies are based on the assumption that risk judgements, such as those commonly used in the psychometric paradigm (e.g., Slovic, Fischhoff & Lichtenstein, 1985), imply causal judgments and that risk evaluation is based on subjective causal scenarios, i.e., on the causes and consequences ascribed to risks. These causal scenarios are modelled following a decision-theoretical risk concept proposed by Yates and Stone (1992), which consists of three basic risk elements: potential loss, loss significance, and uncertainty.

It is assumed that the cognitive representations of the causes and consequences of global environmental changes is structured according to five causally connected levels:

a) people’s attitudes (e.g., laziness),
b) human activities (e.g., car driving);
c) pollution or emissions resulting from human activities (e.g., air pollution, CO2-emission),
d) environmental changes produced by pollution or emissions (e.g., enhancement of the greenhouse effect), and
e) negative consequences of environmental changes that are usually long-term and likely to affect humans (e.g., loss of habitat, health damage, rise of the sea-level).

The applicability of these concepts to the field of global environmental risks has been tested. The results of the individual studies are described in their summaries (study 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 1.4).