Compare and Contrast Psychometric Approach, Cultural Theory and Social Amplification These Three Theories of Risk Perception

The reforms about the society are occurred continuously in the rapidly evolving ear due to the development of technology, which causes that human activities are becoming increasingly complex while they are enjoying these changes. However, this situation brings a lot of uncertainty to the daily life of human beings, which causes most people have to face various risks. According to Waring and Glendon(1998), risks can lead to not only the probability of negative consequence but also the probability of gain. Therefore, people need to make efforts to look for a proper way to identify, assess and cope with these risks, which leads to more and more people start to pay attention on risk perception. Risk perception is used to describe people's attitudes and judgments of the risks, and it also includes people's assessments and responses of the risks. Sjoberg, Moen and Rundmo(2004) state that "risk perception is the subjective assessment of probability of a specified type of accident happening and how concerned we are with the consequences. To perceive risk includes evaluations of the probability as well as the consequences of a negative outcome. (p.8). Generally, six theories which include gambles, the model of revealed preferences, decision making models, psychometric approach, cultural theory and social amplification can be used to research risk perception. However, this essay will focus on introducing and contrasting psychometric approach, cultural theory and social amplification these three theories. Firstly, the definitions of these three theories of risk perception will be presented. Secondly, this essay will compare these three theories from four aspects including foundations of theories, focuses of theories, research participants of theories and the approaches of theories.