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The Impacts of Precautionary Measures and the Disclosure of Scientific Uncertainty on EMF Risk Perception and Trust 

Authors: Peter M. Wiedemann a;  Andrea T. Thalmann b;  Markus A. Grutsch c; Holger Schuumltz a
Affiliations:   a Research Center Juelich, Program Group MUT (Humans, Environment, Technology), D-52425 Juelich, Germany
b Swiss Federal Office of Public Health (SFOPH), CH-3003 Bern, Switzerland
c Gsponer Consulting Group International AG, CH-4015 Basel, Switzerland
DOI: 10.1080/13669870600802111
Publication Frequency: 8 issues per year
Published in: journal Journal of Risk Research, Volume 9, Issue 4 June 2006 , pages 361 - 372
Subject: Risk Management;
Formats available: HTML (English) : PDF (English)
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Abstract

This study evaluates the impact on risk perception and trust in public health protection resulting from disclosure of information about implementation of precautionary measures and from the disclosure of scientific uncertainty in the area of mobile telephony. Based on an experimental design, the study supports our recent findings (Wiedemann and Schuumltz, 2005) that precautionary measures may trigger concerns and amplify EMF-related risk perceptions. Furthermore, our present data once again indicates that information about the implementation of precautionary measures has no positive effect on trust in public health protection. These results, contrary to common expectations, should be considered in decisions about precautionary measures. Risk managers who intend to implement precautionary measures merely as a means for reassuring the public will probably fail. Indeed, even if precautionary measures are justified from a public health perspective, it seems prudent to anticipate the possibly countervailing effects of such measures on the public. This leads to two important challenges for risk communication, first to clarify the difference between hazard and risk and, second, to help avoid such unwanted effects by designing better communication about precautionary measures.
Keywords: Precautionary measures; scientific uncertainty; risk management; risk perception; trust
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