CHARACTERIZING PERCEPTION OF ECOLOGICAL RISK

Relatively little attention has been paid to the role of human percept ion and judgment in ecological risk management. This paper attempts to characterize perceived ecological risk, using the psycho-metric parad igm developed in the domain of human health risk perception. The resea rch began by eliciting a set of scale characteristics and risk items ( e.g., technologies, actions, events, beliefs) from focus group partici pants. Participants in the main study were 68 university students who completed a survey instrument that elicited ratings for each of 65 ite ms on 30 characteristic scales and one scale regarding general risk to natural environments. The results are presented in terms of mean resp onses over individuals for each scale and item combination. Factor ana lyses show that five factors characterize the judgment data. These hav e been termed: impact on species, human benefits, impact on humans, av oidability, and knowledge of impacts. The factor results correspond wi th initial expectations and provide a plausible characterization of ju dgments regarding ecological risk. Some comparisons of mean responses for selected individual items are also presented.