Journal of Risk Research

Thekdi, Shital; Aven, Terje

doi: 10.1080/13669877.2026.2674655pmid: N/A

Abstract In recent years, there has been momentum toward defining the quality of evidence and the overall quality of risk studies, leading to considerable advances in understanding due diligence for risk science applications. There is also increasing recognition that risk studies may not always meet the criteria of a high-quality risk study but still be useful. However, there remain questions about concurrent goals of both quality and usefulness. In this paper, we introduce several considerations for evaluating quality and usefulness. We consider planning horizon, uncertainties, knowledge, and practical use as the main considerations. We then develop a framework to consider the question: What are the primary considerations for risk analysis and management quality in these various settings? This paper will be of interest to risk analysts, policymakers, and private industry in their work to improve the use of risk science in a scalable and efficient manner.

Meng, Zilong; Dou, Huayu

doi: 10.1080/13669877.2026.2674660pmid: N/A

Abstract Drawing on nationally representative data from the 2017 and 2021 Chinese Social Survey, this paper examines how Internet use shapes public safety perception (PSP) in China. Across multiple linear regressions, logit models, multilevel analyses, and instrumental-variable (2SLS) estimates, we find a robust negative relationship: greater Internet use decreases people’s PSP. The effect, however, is heterogeneous. By purpose, social-information use consistently eroded PSP, while the relationship between entertainment-oriented use and PSP exhibited a cross-wave divergence which appeared neutral in 2017 but positive in 2021, reflecting the buffering and diversionary role of online entertainment during the pandemic. By perception type, the Internet has a stronger depressive effect on societal-level evaluations of safety than on individual-level assessments. Subgroup analyses show sharper declines among women and the less educated, and provincial context was more salient in 2021 the wave, with higher average education predicting lower PSP. These findings underscore how digital exposure interacts with usage patterns and social environments, carrying important implications for governance and risk communication.

Jones, Michelle; McLaren, Helen; Brodie, Tina; Bishop, Jasmine; York, Kara; Edney, Laura; Regan, Jane; Travers, Kate

doi: 10.1080/13669877.2026.2674657pmid: N/A

Abstract Young pregnant care-leavers in danger of having their infant removed are positioned as both exposed to risk (e.g. as a result of their vulnerability) and posing a risk to others (e.g. their child). They are at the transition between being a child and becoming a parent within the welfare system. Often considered hard-to-reach, young pregnant care-leavers are high-risk and complex clients. ‘My Place’ is a South Australian trauma responsive service providing health and therapeutic services to this population group working to assess, navigate, minimise, and operationalise risks. As part of the evaluation of My Place, qualitative semi-structured interviews and focus groups were held with young service-users (n = 9), staff (n = 4), health consumers (n = 3), and service stakeholders (n = 23) from a range of fields of practice. Several understandings of risk were identified. The young people reported My Place engaged them in the navigation of risks and, whenever possible, choice and decision-making. They took the young peoples’ developmental-stage, strengths, and trauma-background into account in risk assessment and planning using a harm minimisation approach. In recognising the frequency and intensity of the therapeutic alliance, service stakeholders trusted My Place’s risk-assessment and management plans. My Place made risks explicit, openly grappling with ethical trickiness and working to share or carry risk. Embedded within a trauma-responsive learning health service, My Place was found to have a high tolerance for risk, ‘holding’ risk for young people and other services. Sharing information across services, access to safety-learning systems, and clinical supervision provided a safe and supportive environment for My Place to embrace risk.

Sartika, Diana Dewi; Yulasteriyani, ; Syafe’I, Akhmad; Muslimah, Hayana; Oktanedi, Aldri; Hapsari, Yuanita Dwi; Masrizal,

doi: 10.1080/13669877.2026.2679542pmid: N/A

Abstract Production is increasingly shifting into village territories as a result of rural industrialization, leading to an uneven distribution of socio-ecological risks. This article examines how such manufactured risks arise and how women enact reflexivity in Bakung Village, South Sumatra. Using a qualitative descriptive design embedded in participatory action research, we combined in-depth interviews, focus group discussions, participant observation, and community social mapping to diagnose exposure pathways and responses. Findings reveal hamlet-specific configurations: domestic water contamination linked to tapioca effluent in Dusun 1; persistent dust and noise from a coal haul corridor disrupting livelihoods in Dusun 2; and cross-boundary particulates from a wood processing plant affecting Dusun 3. Women lead proactive contention—demonstrations, petitions, monitoring, and visual documentation—while developing adaptive micro-infrastructures such as household filtration, interior dust barriers, and intensified hygiene. Institutional responses were largely compensatory and reactive, reducing immediate burdens without addressing structural drivers. The research offers a gendered, community-driven viewpoint to discussions on risk society, illustrating how delocalized threats are made apparent through participatory mapping and how adaptation expenses are individualized at the household level. Enforced setbacks, cumulative impact assessment, independent monitoring with public dashboards, and stakeholder forums involving affected villages are among the implications of industrialization.

de Lima Lopes, Rodrigo Esteves; Müller, Marcus

doi: 10.1080/13669877.2026.2674661pmid: N/A

Abstract This article compares the political conceptualisation of risk in Brazilian Portuguese and German. The corpus consists of minutes from the Bundestag (German parliament) and the Câmara dos Deputados (Brazilian parliament), covering 20 years of debates (2001-2001) and originates from two research projects. The first is the BrPolicorpus, a corpus of political official Brazilian government documents maintained by the MiDiTeS (Media, Discourse Technology, and Society) research group at the Ph2D (Research Centre for Post-Humanist and Digital Humanities) at UNICAMP while the German corpus is maintained by the Discourse Lab project at the Institute of Linguistics and Literary Studies at TU-Darmstadt. The corpus was POS processed and the occurrences of risk were counted for each language, using a work per million normalisation. Linear regression served as an indication of uses above or below the median; such variation was assumed as evidence of variations in discourse motivated by context. After this, the collocates in a five-year period groups for each language were processed using Log-Likelihood. The libraries employed for processing were SpaCy and NLTK and the base R package. In German, the use risk remained stable between 2001 and 2021, with an emphasis on compounds and reflecting discursive continuity despite political changes. The term is widely used in topics such as health, economics, and security. In Portuguese, it showed variations linked to the political context, with peaks in election and crisis years. Grammatical patterns with personalisation and impersonalisation strategies were identified. The use of adjectives in a marked order intensifies the discourse. Environmental, economic and health risks were frequent, with an emphasis on sovereignty and investments. Cultural and linguistic differences were a challenge. The research thus makes a significant contribution to the study of the word risk and also to the lexical and discourse comparison between German and Portuguese.

Imazu, Shintaroh; Kusumi, Takashi

doi: 10.1080/13669877.2026.2674658pmid: N/A

Abstract This study examines the decision-making mechanisms for vaccination during the COVID-19 pandemic, focusing on the temporal changes in information weighting and the moderating effects of cognitive traits. Specifically, we addressed whether the impacts of perceived effectiveness and perceived safety on perceived risk and perceived benefit changed over time, whether critical thinking (CT) and numeracy (BNT) moderated these impacts, and whether the formed perceived risk and perceived benefit predicted actual cumulative vaccination behavior. We used data from a four-wave web panel survey conducted in Japan between August 2021 and February 2023 (N = 220). The analysis employed linear mixed models (LMM) to account for within-person variation, as well as ordinal logistic regression analysis to predict the cumulative number of vaccinations. To clarify the direction of causality, variables were entered with a one-wave lag (at time t − 1). The LMM results indicated that perceived effectiveness and perceived safety consistently predicted perceived risk and perceived benefit. The impact of perceived safety significantly attenuated from the early stages to the later stages of the pandemic (β = −0.23, p = .020). Regarding cognitive traits, individuals with higher CT tend to reflect perceived effectiveness information more strongly in their perceived benefit (β = 0.10, p = .007). In contrast, individuals with higher BNT showed a main effect of maintaining a lower baseline for perceived risk (β = −0.12, p = .023). Furthermore, perceived benefit predicted subsequent cumulative vaccination doses more strongly than perceived risk (OR = 3.80, p < .001). This study provides longitudinal evidence suggesting that vaccine-related perceptions are dynamic rather than static, and that reference points may be updated through experience. In particular, the decline in the impact of perceived safety highlights the necessity for dynamic and targeted perceived risk communication during public health crises.

Mokry, Melissa; Kim, Jangyul

doi: 10.1080/13669877.2026.2674653pmid: N/A

Abstract This study investigates risk-related information-seeking behavior and dual-process risk perception in the context of wildfires, integrating constructs from the Risk Information Seeking and Processing Model (RISP), the Framework for Risk Information Seeking (FRIS), and the Planned Risk Information Seeking Model (PRISM). Key variables include past information-seeking behavior, self-efficacy, response efficacy, cognitive and affective risk perception, perceived hazard knowledge, information needs, and behavioral intention. A cross-sectional mail survey (60.8% response rate; N = 432) was conducted in the High Park Fire Burn Area in Colorado. Findings highlight the predictive value of dual-process risk perception, particularly the role of affective risk in motivating past wildfire-related information seeking. While cognitive risk perception more strongly influenced behavioral intention, the two dimensions were closely correlated. Response efficacy emerged as a significant driver of intention, whereas self-efficacy was less predictive. Notably, perceived hazard knowledge and current information needs exhibited inverse associations with behavioral intention, complicating assumptions about information sufficiency. These results inform refined theoretical models and more targeted communication strategies for wildfire-prone communities.

Niu, Jing; Wang, Chenxi; Yang, Zhuohui

doi: 10.1080/13669877.2026.2674659pmid: N/A

Abstract This study investigates the motivational factors influencing the intentions of Chinese citizens to seek information in the context of environmental risks associated with Japan’s discharge of nuclear wastewater. The conceptual model combines the Planned Risk Information Seeking Model (PRISM) with social media exposure and fatalism, which is a concept related to traditional Chinese culture. Data from an online survey of 650 Chinese citizens, conducted using quota sampling, are analyzed using structural equation modeling. The results indicate that social media exposure positively affects individuals’ risk perception and negative affect but does not significantly influence information need. Furthermore, risk perception, negative affect, and perceived knowledge all positively influence the information seeking. Additionally, the study conducted a multi-group path analysis using fatalism as a grouping variable. The results show that in the high-fatalism group (N = 354), the positive influence of risk perception as well as information need on information seeking is weakened, whereas the positive impact of negative affect on information seeking is strengthened. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.

Şengül, Doğan

doi: 10.1080/13669877.2026.2667749pmid: N/A

Salgado Cunha, Noémia

doi: 10.1080/13669877.2026.2667760pmid: N/A

Abstract This article examines how flood risk is communicated and socially interpreted through hydraulic and transport infrastructures in flood-prone territories. Drawing on visual sociology and visual semiotics within risk communication research, it analyses 31 bridges in the Lower Mondego region (Portugal) using a layered visual-semiotic protocol that combines systematic description of material features with semiotic interpretation of infrastructural configurations. Visual data were triangulated with narratives from 26 focus groups conducted in flood-affected communities, allowing comparison between material cues and lived interpretations of risk. The analysis identifies five risk communication regimes: localised effectiveness, systemic fragility, spatial injustice, normalised error, and institutional disconnection. These regimes show how infrastructures function as communicational artefacts that make infrastructural vulnerability and uneven exposure visible, normalise uncertainty, and materialise uneven forms of care and responsibility. The article contributes to risk research by conceptualising bridges as socio-technical media through which flood risk is communicated and interpreted outside formal messages, showing how material configurations shape public understandings of infrastructural vulnerability, uneven exposure, responsibility, and acceptable risk, and advancing a transferable visual-semiotic protocol for analysing risk communication through everyday public infrastructures in flood-prone contexts.