Risk AnalysisPub Date : 2025-07-26DOI: 10.1111/risa.70079
Sophia Schaller
{"title":"Mental health risks of pandemic-related media communication: The mediating roles of distinct types of perceived threat.","authors":"Sophia Schaller","doi":"10.1111/risa.70079","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/risa.70079","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Research has shown that constant exposure to health crisis-related information can negatively affect individuals' mental health. Using data from a two-wave panel survey of German citizens (n = 1162) conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic, this study aims to examine whether and how the relationship between people's media exposure and mental health is mediated through distinct types of perceived threat. The results show that perceived threat posed by the virus (perceived health threat) and perceived threat regarding the consequences of governmental antipandemic measures (such as lockdowns) for personal freedom (perceived political threat) mediated media effects on depressive symptoms. However, the effects differed significantly depending on the type of information source. While more frequent exposure to high-quality traditional news media (public broadcasters, national newspapers and magazines, and local and regional newspapers) positively affected depressive symptoms mediated by perceived health threat, the use of low-quality traditional news media (private broadcasters and tabloids) and social media platforms did this mediated by perceived political threat. By providing a nuanced account of the relationship between media exposure, perceived threat, and mental health during times of a major health crisis, this study offers practical insights into how harmful effects of health crisis risk communication could be mitigated.</p>","PeriodicalId":21472,"journal":{"name":"Risk Analysis","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.3,"publicationDate":"2025-07-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144733035","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Risk AnalysisPub Date : 2025-07-26DOI: 10.1111/risa.70092
Emma Soane
{"title":"The Microfoundations of Organizational Risk.","authors":"Emma Soane","doi":"10.1111/risa.70092","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/risa.70092","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Organizational risk is the possibility of events preventing the achievement of objectives and disrupting organizational viability. Developing understanding of organizational risk is necessary to allow realization of opportunities and protection from harm. However, much existing theorizing focuses on either a higher level of analysis, for example, studies of organizational risk culture, or a lower level of analysis, such as studies of individual perception, personality, and risk-taking. One way to advance theorizing involves connecting both levels of analysis. These connections are central to a microfoundations perspective that suggests organizational phenomena can be understood by linking macrolevel contexts with microlevel contexts and actions. I draw on this perspective to develop a model of organizational risk and explain how cross-level processes connect macro- and microlevel concepts. I focus on the organizational psychology literature that encompasses higher and lower levels of analysis to select and examine relevant concepts. I explain how organizational cultures create contexts for individual risk-taking that are homogeneous when constraints are strong and directional or variable when constraints are weak and ambiguous. These behaviors aggregate within and across units to influence organizational risk. Individual risk-taking also influences organizational risk via autonomy and discretion. In developing the model, I show how theories of cross-level processes extend understanding of organizational risk. I discuss implications for advancing theorizing about organizational risk by encompassing its microfoundations and linking them with managerial actions and objectives. Future research could examine these mechanisms through empirical studies and shed light on how leaders influence processes and change organizational risk.</p>","PeriodicalId":21472,"journal":{"name":"Risk Analysis","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2025-07-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144718286","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Risk AnalysisPub Date : 2025-07-25DOI: 10.1111/risa.70086
Terje Aven
{"title":"On Why Practice Needs Generic Guidance on How to Define and Understand the Concept of Risk.","authors":"Terje Aven","doi":"10.1111/risa.70086","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/risa.70086","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Many definitions of the risk term exist, and there is considerable debate about the most suitable ways of conceptualizing and describing risk. This perspective paper discusses the importance of this debate: What is the value of searching for some best knowledge on the topic that can provide guidance for practical use when assessing, communicating, and managing risk? Risk is a basic concept in different types of applications, like insurance, engineering, health, business, and climate change, but is there a need and rationale to make generic conclusions regarding what is the most appropriate knowledge across the applications? Should the fundamental principle not be that different situations call for different definitions? In line with this principle, the best way to conceptualize and describe risk should be determined by the users, taking into account all relevant factors of the situation considered, as well as their insights and experiences using the risk term. The main aim of the paper is to argue that such a pragmatic perspective on risk conceptualization and characterization is anti-scientific and could have serious consequences for the understanding, assessment, communication, and management of risk. Several examples are used to support this conclusion.</p>","PeriodicalId":21472,"journal":{"name":"Risk Analysis","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2025-07-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144718285","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Risk AnalysisPub Date : 2025-07-24DOI: 10.1111/risa.70084
Takaharu Igarashi, Karen Marais
{"title":"Cartography of Accident Causation Models: Remapping the Modeling Landscape.","authors":"Takaharu Igarashi, Karen Marais","doi":"10.1111/risa.70084","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/risa.70084","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Accident causation models are abstractions of the real world that explicitly or implicitly underlie our perception and understanding of accidents. As the continuous advancement of our dynamic society demands us to keep updating our understanding of accidents, this review article provides an overview of the landscape of accident causation models to aid our endless journey of expanding the collective endeavor of accident modeling. Our review of existing literature reviews identified several issues in the labels and categorizations of models, including logical inconsistency and ambiguous definitions, that prevent the comparison and analysis of models from a neutral and objective standpoint. To offer a structured perspective for revealing what was actually done in the past and what can be further explored in accident modeling practices, we developed an alternative map of modeling approaches based on their underlying assumptions and geometric structures of graphical representations. This article further provides individual reviews of 30 models, focusing particularly on how the assumptions and structures of the models inform the derivation of remedial and preventive measures. It concludes with a discussion on unexplored research paths that the alternative map directs us to investigate, indicating that our journey toward a safer world is far from complete.</p>","PeriodicalId":21472,"journal":{"name":"Risk Analysis","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2025-07-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144708604","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Risk AnalysisPub Date : 2025-07-22DOI: 10.1111/risa.70065
Elisa Tedaldi, Marta Caserotti, Paolo Girardi, Teresa Gavaruzzi, Alessandra Tasso, Lorella Lotto, Enrico Rubaltelli, Roberta Sellaro
{"title":"Promoting the energy transition: The role of decision context and climate risk in the investment in solar versus nuclear energy.","authors":"Elisa Tedaldi, Marta Caserotti, Paolo Girardi, Teresa Gavaruzzi, Alessandra Tasso, Lorella Lotto, Enrico Rubaltelli, Roberta Sellaro","doi":"10.1111/risa.70065","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/risa.70065","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The energy transition requires modernizing the energy sector and investing in alternatives to fossil fuels. Both nuclear and renewable energies are potential solutions to lower carbon emissions, although nuclear power is generally less favored by public opinion. We investigated whether support and feelings for solar farms and nuclear power plants construction vary depending on whether these energy sources are evaluated separately (SE) or jointly (JE). We also examined how climate change risk perception influences willingness to invest (WTI) in these power plants and their perceived risks. Results confirmed that solar farms elicited more positive attitudes and feelings than nuclear power plants. Crucially, when evaluated in JE (vs. SE), solar farms were viewed even more positively and received greater support, whereas nuclear plants were perceived more negatively. Climate change risk perception correlated with the perception of nuclear plants as riskier and solar farms as less risky. There was marginally significant evidence that the former relationship emerged only in SE, whereas the latter was more pronounced in SE (vs. JE). Furthermore, climate change risk perception positively predicted the WTI in solar farms, but only in JE. In contrast, the WTI in nuclear power remained unaffected in both contexts. Finally, the perceived risk of each energy source was negatively associated with the WTI in them. These results offer insights into the psychological factors influencing people's perception and support for alternative energy infrastructures and can help develop effective communication strategies to facilitate a smooth and successful energy transition.</p>","PeriodicalId":21472,"journal":{"name":"Risk Analysis","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2025-07-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144691300","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Risk AnalysisPub Date : 2025-07-18DOI: 10.1111/risa.70081
Nina Lauharatanahirun, Jason A Aimone, Jeffrey Braxton Gately
{"title":"Risk behind the veil of ambiguity: Decision-making under social and nonsocial sources of uncertainty.","authors":"Nina Lauharatanahirun, Jason A Aimone, Jeffrey Braxton Gately","doi":"10.1111/risa.70081","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/risa.70081","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Research has long documented how decision-making in risky environments differs between environments where the probabilities of uncertain outcomes are known and where the probabilities are unknown, the latter often referred to as \"ambiguous\" environments. Yet, there is a dearth of research examining how decisions may be affected by the source responsible for the distribution of uncertain outcomes. The source responsible for generating distributions of uncertain outcomes may be generated by another person (i.e., is social in nature) or by a nonsocial probabilistic mechanism. While a few studies examine how the source responsible for uncertain outcomes affects decisions when probabilities are known, the present study extends prior research to the realm of ambiguity by testing how the source of uncertainty affects both decisions when probabilities are fully known and when probabilities are partially unknown using a within-subjects experimental design. We calculate a general measurement of Social Risk Sensitivity to capture how individuals differ in their sensitivity across three uncertainty environments: risk with no ambiguity, risk with low ambiguity, and risk with high ambiguity. We find evidence showing strong correlations between Social Risk Sensitivity across all three levels of ambiguity. Our results corroborate the previous literature regarding ambiguity effects on decision-making behavior and extend prior work for the first time in this area by demonstrating that individual decisions are shaped by their individual sensitivity to the source from which uncertainty is derived.</p>","PeriodicalId":21472,"journal":{"name":"Risk Analysis","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2025-07-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144660092","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Confronting epistemic blinders in impact assessment and environmental health risk assessment processes.","authors":"Diana Lewis, Heather Castleden, Jeffrey Masuda, Chantelle Richmond, Dyanna Jolly","doi":"10.1111/risa.70073","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/risa.70073","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The driving epistemology of settler-colonial society in Canada is socially structured around the elimination of Indigenous Peoples' access to territory to expropriate its resources for their own purposes, active within state legislation and policies that disproportionately harm Indigenous Peoples through the continual extraction of resources and control over territory. Impact assessment (IA) processes have been pivotal in this strategy, deployed to rationalize settler colonial rule over land and people under the guise of probabilistic risk assessment. This epistemology is critiqued for its propensity, particularly in environmental health risk assessment (EHRA) processes, to reduce Indigenous Peoples' complex lives and land-based relations into reductive environmental exposures that serve to sanitize, homogenize, and normalize continued colonial violence on their bodies, to 'talk away' how Indigenous Peoples are impacted. This Perspective offers insight into how Indigenous Peoples' epistemological frameworks for health and wellbeing are neglected in IA processes. We add our voices to others who insist that EHRA must reflect the diversity of place-based relationships and epistemological ways of approaching Indigenous health and wellbeing. Government and industry must remove their epistemic blinders to recognize the need for multiple approaches, knowledges, and value systems to reflect and measure the cultural, social, and ecological consequences of development on Indigenous Peoples.</p>","PeriodicalId":21472,"journal":{"name":"Risk Analysis","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2025-07-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144660091","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Risk AnalysisPub Date : 2025-07-16DOI: 10.1111/risa.70083
Janet Z Yang, Yifei He, Thomas Hugh Feeley
{"title":"Using emotional appeal to encourage recycle and reuse behaviors.","authors":"Janet Z Yang, Yifei He, Thomas Hugh Feeley","doi":"10.1111/risa.70083","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/risa.70083","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Based on a sample of U.S. adult participants (N = 1015), this messaging experiment reveals that a mock-up Instagram post highlighting the environmental impact of plastic waste was more effective in eliciting anger, disgust, and hopelessness than a message highlighting the health impact of plastic waste. These emotions, along with fear and anxiety, were positively associated with perceived risks of plastic waste to both human health and the environment. Together, emotional response to and cognitive evaluation of the risks motivated people to process the message in a thoughtful, deliberate manner, which contributed to attitudes and behavioral intention toward recycle and reuse. These findings suggest that persuasion intended to encourage recycle and reuse behaviors among American consumers should primarily focus on the environmental impact of plastic waste, while anger and disgust may be effective emotional appeals.</p>","PeriodicalId":21472,"journal":{"name":"Risk Analysis","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2025-07-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144643323","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Risk AnalysisPub Date : 2025-07-15DOI: 10.1111/risa.70077
Margaret E Coleman
{"title":"Deliberating the scientific evidence base for influenza transmission to raw milk consumers.","authors":"Margaret E Coleman","doi":"10.1111/risa.70077","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/risa.70077","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Transmission of influenza A H5N1, commonly known as avian influenza or bird flu, from wild birds to cows on 1073 large US dairy farms in 17 states, and from cows to 41 dairy workers in five states, has raised concerns about limited evidence for transmission routes. Factors other than scientific evidence, particularly psychological, social, cultural, and political factors influencing different worldviews, support highly polarized risk perceptions about H5N1 in dairy cows, workers, and consumers. Of particular concern is the lack of scientific evidence to support federal warnings about the hypothesis that influenza transmits by the oral route to raw milk consumers. This review focuses on experimental evidence of disease transmission from 44 H5N1 inoculation studies conducted in primates, ferrets, cows, mice, cats, and dogs. Serious errors in extrapolation are apparent in the treatment of evidence for H5N1 in the media and some journal papers that unintentionally or intentionally amplify risk. Considerations of knowledge gaps and formal methods to bridge the gaps are introduced to motivate future risk analysis and facilitate building a coherent basis of knowledge to support development of rigorous evidence-based policies and risk messaging for H5N1.</p>","PeriodicalId":21472,"journal":{"name":"Risk Analysis","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2025-07-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144643322","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Risk AnalysisPub Date : 2025-07-14DOI: 10.1111/risa.70061
Zahra Sedighi-Maman, Ashish Gupta, Gary B Wilkerson, Aleš Popovič
{"title":"Machine learning approaches for improved understanding of factors associated with history of sport-related concussion.","authors":"Zahra Sedighi-Maman, Ashish Gupta, Gary B Wilkerson, Aleš Popovič","doi":"10.1111/risa.70061","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/risa.70061","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Sport-related concussion (SRC), which accounts for a significant portion of all mild traumatic brain injuries in the United States, can adversely affect quality of life and long-term cognitive function. Identifying the persisting effects of concussion is vital for developing interventions that may reduce the risk of concussion recurrence and progressive neurodegeneration. Development of improved prognostic and therapeutic procedures might be achieved through an increased understanding of interrelationships among self-reported health and wellness status indicators, demographic and anthropometric data, and perceptual-motor performance metrics. This study aims to identify key factors that are associated with (a) a lifetime history of at least one concussion, (b) a lifetime history of more than one concussion, and (c) the number of years since the most recent concussion occurrence. We developed numerous analytical models from the set of disparate data. We addressed the class imbalance problem in objectives one and two of the study using the synthetic minority oversampling technique method and extracted the most important features relating to our three objectives using the random forest (RF) method. The results demonstrated that perceptual-motor performance capabilities play an important role in confirming that a concussion was previously sustained. RF, artificial neural networks, and decision trees demonstrated the best performance in this regard, whereas having a history of more than one previous concussion was best identified by K-nearest neighbors (KNNs). Multivariate adaptive regression splines and general linear model provided the best retrospective association with the number of years since the most recent occurrence of concussion. This study demonstrates that computational models have the potential to inform the development of individualized interventions for optimal health and wellness outcomes.</p>","PeriodicalId":21472,"journal":{"name":"Risk Analysis","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2025-07-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144627034","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}