The Effect Of Presentation Format On Risk Avoidance

The way probability information displays has certain impact on human being. Human live in a world full of risk. Governments, individuals, hospitals and other parties need to communication risks. One very important aspect of risk communication is how to convey the probability of occurence, which is essentially a numerical value. Researches have found different methods of presenting the very same probability value could have various effects. Our research tested the risk avoidance elicited by pie chart and textual presentation under different risk probabilities of the same kind of risk event.Our research adapted a paradigm of "willingness to pay" by former researches and explored the following questions:1. How great is the risk avoidance of participants when presented low risk probabilities with pie chart, text and pie chart with text label.2. How great is the risk avoidance of participants when presented high risk probabilities with pie chart, text and pie chart with text label.3. How the risk avoidances under pie chart and text condition alter from low to high risk.4. While instructed to perform vertim(rational) process of pie chart information, how great would the risk avoidance be under pie chart condition.Experiment 1 set the risk probability to be 30/5000 and 15/5000 for the two toothpaste products and used 3 presentations (pie chart, text, pie chart with text label) to display the numerical risks. Results show participant gave lowest price under pie chart condition. Other two formats didn’t vary.Experiment 2 set the base risk to be 3000/5000 and 1500/5000 (the improvement of the new product is still twice) and used the same scenario. Results show pie chart format led to the biggest price given. Other two formats didn’t vary either.Experiment 3 explored how risk avoidance under pie chart and textual conditions vary when the risk probabilities range from low to high (19 points between 2% to 98%). Results show risk avoidance led by pie chart is lower than textual level at and below 1%; no significant difference from 3% ～1 8%; takes on textual level at 21%; and larger than textual level at and above 27%.Experiment 4 instructed participants explicitly to perform finer rational calculation of risk in pie chart and found no significant different in risk avoidance led by different formats at 3 probability levels of low, middle and high.Our research suggests the co-presentation of foreground and background information does not necessarily lead to lowered risk avoidance. It actually increases risk avoidance in big risk probability condition. And the mechanism behind this may well be the fuzzy/gist processing of pie chart information.