Impacts Of The Catastrophic Events On Public Risk Perception

With the rapid development of technology and growth of productivity,our country also face with lots of tough problems on social risk management.How to balance the relationship between economic development and risk management is necessary to the sustainable development of our country.Risk perception research helps the policy-makers to understand the intuitive perception of the group who suffer from disasters,as well as providing scientific support for risk decision-making and management.Risk perception research is an important strategy for risk management,it also help to improve the ability of risk management of the decision-making level,In the early years,the research on risk perception is mainly based on qualitative analysis,which is generally studied at individual level and social level.In recent years,quantitative research on applied mathematical statistics has been developed,and mathematical statistics,represented by structural equation model,have been widely used.The research of risk perception in China is still at the initial stage.The main problems of the current research are:Firstly,lack of research on the internal structure of the risk perception while most current research only focus on the analysis of the influence factors of the risk perception.Secondly,lack of comparative and continuous risk perception research.Thirdly,the establishment of the evaluation index system of risk perception is lack of comprehensiveness and only a few researchers try to provide the policy-makers with suggestions on risk management according to the results of risk perception research.This study summarizes theory and practice about public risk perception in the past and establishes a research framework of the impact of catastrophic events on public risk perception according to the principle of comprehensiveness and systematicness.The main contents of the research framework are the research of change of public risk perception mean score based on the paired sample t test,the public risk perception structure based on the structural equation model and the research on the influence factors of public risk perception based on the regression equation model.For the case study of impacts of typhoon on public climate change perception,after the design of the questionnaire and data collection,an evaluation indicator system of climate change perception which including 5 first-level indicators and 23 second-level indicators was established.The system was used to evaluate the climate change perception of the students of the Xiamen University.The results of the mean sample t-test show that only following climate change cognitive dimensions were significantly affected by the typhoon meranti:the towards the effects of adjudication of individuals on the mitigation of climate change(t=-2.370,P<0.05)and the evaluation of the domestic efforts on the mitigation of climate change(t=-3.375,P<0.001).The results of analysis of structural equation model show that the typhoon did not affect the structure of public climate change risk perception.The regression equation analysis results show that different college,whether educated with climate change knowledge on the class or not,difference of location of hometown affect the risk perception significantly before and after typhoon meranti.According to the conclusions above,we suggest that the education of climate change can be an effective way to improve the students ability of adaption and mitigation of climate change.For the case study of heavy chemical explosion on public risk perception,after the design of the questionnaire and data collection,an evaluation indicator system of heavy chemical project perception before the explosion which including 5 first-level indicators and 32 second-level indicators and an evaluation indicator system of heavy chemical project perception after the explosion which including 3 first-level indicators and the 32 second-level indicators were established.The evaluation index system of the heavy chemical project perception was used to evaluate the risk perception of people live near a chemical project before and after the explosion of it.The results of mean sample t-test show that the majority of the perception indicators have been significantly changed because of the explosion.As for the trust of the source of risk information,the most significant changes are the trust of the information of local government(t=6.824,P<0.001)and the trust of the information of the faculty of the factory(t=6.981,P<0.001).For the severity perception of the possible disasters brought by the project,the most significant changes are the severity of air pollution(t=-11.217,P<0.001)and the severity of noise(t=-11.825,P<0.001).For the acceptance of possible disasters brought by the project,the most significant changes are air pollution acceptance(t=7.335,P<0.001)and noise acceptance(t=6.645,P<0.001).After structural equation model analysis,it was found that the explosion strengthened the negative relationship between the trust of the source of risk information and the risk severity perception(The coefficient changed from—0.20 and-0.13 to-0.40).The explosion weakened the negative relationship between risk severity perception and risk acceptance(The correlation coefficient changed from-0.33 and-0.35 to-0.25).The regression equation analysis of influence factors on risk perception shows that gender,age,employment status and education have the significant effect on risk perception before the explosion.While after the explosion,personal factors do not have a significant impact on risk perception.Based on the results of public risk perception on heavy chemical projects,we suggest that the improvement of the ability of project safety management and the promotion of risk communication are can be the effective ways to deal with the work of heavy chemical project risk management.In this study,the research framework of impacts of catastrophic events on public risk perception was eatablished.The statistical methods of structural equation model and regression equation model are introduced to evaluate public perception before and after disasters.In order to evaluate the impact of disasters on public risk perception,this paper analysis of the change of perception score,the change of the risk perception structure and the change of the influence factors before and after the disasters.Base on the results of the change of public risk perception,we come up with suggestions help to manage the risk affairs.This research improved the methodology of risk perception research as well as provides strategies for risk communication and risk management.