[Cognitive and affective components of the judgement of environmental risks]

The goal of the present study was to clarify the determinants underlying people's subjective appraisal of the riskiness of environmental problems for human beings. It is assumed that judgments of environmental risks are a function of their ratings on the relevant psychological risk dimensions. In a psychometric study, 186 subjects evaluated 30 environmental problems on 13 judgment scales. Regression analysis shows that the essential predictors of risk judgments are the perceived frequency of harm, the perceived amount of harm and the emotions evoked by thinking about the threats arising from environmental problems. The results show that the subjective judgment of both the perceived frequency and amount of harm vary according to the risk source. By contrast, the various emotions evoked by the different risk sources are explained above all by interindividual differences. The regression model does not satisfactorily predict the risk judgments for one class of environmental risks, namely the condition of and changes in the biosphere. This finding points to the conclusion that subjects use more specific evaluation criteria to evaluate this class of risks.