TY - JOUR

T1 - Consequences, morality, and time in environmental risk evaluation

AU - Böhm, Gisela

AU - Pfister, Hans-Rüdiger

N1 - Funding Information: This research was supported by Grant He 1449/2-2 from the German Research Association (DFG) as part of the program ‘Human Dimensions of Global Change’. The authors wish to thank Marcus Ladineo and Dorothee Körner for their help in conducting the experiments.

PY - 2005/9/1

Y1 - 2005/9/1

N2 - Environmental risks pose a serious problem to individual and societal decision-making, and the public debate is often characterized by a conflict between morally-principled and technically oriented points of view. Drawing on previous work of Böhm and Pfister (2000), we propose a model on how environmental risks are cognitively represented and how risks are evaluated. The model suggests two evaluative pathways, evaluations of consequences and evaluation of moral considerations, each leading to a distinct set of emotions and action tendencies. Either one of these pathways may become dominant depending on the evaluative focus of the person, which, in turn, depends on the causal structure of the risk. An experimental study yields confirming evidence for this model. Furthermore, the influence of time perspective, that is, the delay of negative consequences caused by an environmental risk, is investigated. Contrary to the common assumption, only weak evidence for temporal discounting effects is found. It is concluded that environmental risks, due to their strong moral component, are partly immune to time perspective.

AB - Environmental risks pose a serious problem to individual and societal decision-making, and the public debate is often characterized by a conflict between morally-principled and technically oriented points of view. Drawing on previous work of Böhm and Pfister (2000), we propose a model on how environmental risks are cognitively represented and how risks are evaluated. The model suggests two evaluative pathways, evaluations of consequences and evaluation of moral considerations, each leading to a distinct set of emotions and action tendencies. Either one of these pathways may become dominant depending on the evaluative focus of the person, which, in turn, depends on the causal structure of the risk. An experimental study yields confirming evidence for this model. Furthermore, the influence of time perspective, that is, the delay of negative consequences caused by an environmental risk, is investigated. Contrary to the common assumption, only weak evidence for temporal discounting effects is found. It is concluded that environmental risks, due to their strong moral component, are partly immune to time perspective.

KW - Business psychology

KW - risk perception

KW - environmental risk

KW - temporal discounting

KW - Emotional responses

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=32144450310&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1080/13669870500064143

DO - 10.1080/13669870500064143

M3 - Journal articles

VL - 8

SP - 461

EP - 479

JO - Journal of Risk Research

JF - Journal of Risk Research

SN - 1366-9877

IS - 6

ER -