Security values and communication in risk perception

By showing the same pattern of results in both Turkish and Israeli participants, the study of Kaptan and colleagues (2013) showed significant associations between values defined in SVT (Schwartz, 1994) and terrorism-related risk perception. Still, this study revealed some differences between the two groups of participants. Namely, Turkish participants attributed greater importance to the Security value and were more emotional regarding the perceived risk of terrorist attacks (Kaptan et al., 2013). The authors of this study argued that these findings have important implications for risk communication designed for specific countries: people with higher security values might need more informative messages which could reduce the overestimated level of perceived risk, while people with higher Hedonism values might require more alerting message in order not to underestimate the level of terrorism-related risk (Kaptan et al., 2013).

Note: See source document for full reference.

Cultural Factors: Communication, Norms/values

Hazards: Man-made intentional hazards

Disaster Phases: Prevention, Preparedness

Types of Actors Concerned: Non-active citizens

Recommendations:

• Develop guidelines for disaster practitioners that take into consideration the different needs of and approaches to different ethnical groups
• Use trustworthy, widespread, multi-lingual, culturally appropriate and inclusive means of alerting the target population in case of disasters
• Use cultural factors to improve the effectiveness of disaster communication