Final Program - Society for Risk Analysis

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) led the effort to coordinatewith other federal and Gulf state agencies to develop seafood safety criteria,monitoring procedures, re-opening protocols, and extended seafood surveillance.Thousands of seafood samples collected from Gulf waters, dockside and in the marketplacewere tested for oil and dispersant contamination. Results of chemical andsensory testing showed that all samples were below the contamination levels of concern.Seafood testing for reopening of federal waters continued until the last gridaround the wellhead was opened on April 19, 2011. Reopened areas were subject totwo additional surveys after reopening to assure continued seafood safety. Lessonslearned include: 1) A rapid spill response is essential, 2) Regulators and scientistsmust work together to identify key questions that must be answered and criteria fordata that will be collected, 3) Care must be taken to design a sampling and analysisplan that provides environmental managers with data from which to make decisions,e.g. reopening fisheries, 4) A tiered approach to analysis is cost-effective and allowsan adaptive approach to sampling, 5) Rapid turn-around of analytical results allowsmanagers to take action to mitigate damage and injury.W3-A.1 Diebol JK, Zikmund-Fisher BJ, Ross PT, Turkelson A, Weber I, FranzblauA, Parker E; jangstro@umich.eduUniversity of Michigan, The University of IowaRELATIONSHIP BETWEEN JUDGMENTS OF HEALTH RISK ANDSATISFACTION WITH HAZARD AND EXPOSURE COMMUNICA-TIONSIn many risk communication contexts, including those following communityexposure assessment studies, a full risk assessment may be incomplete or infeasible.Available data may instead be limited to hazard and exposure information. A lackof information regarding health risk in such situations could cause receivers to bedissatisfied with communications. However, empirical research on this topic is limited.We are examining this question, and more specifically whether satisfaction withcommunications is related to the subjective ability to judge health risk, as part of theCommunity Perceptions of Dioxins (CPOD) study. The CPOD study is following upwith participants (both exposed and control) and nonparticipants in a community exposureassessment study of dioxin contamination in Michigan’s Midland and Saginawcounties. In the second phase of data collection, open-ended, qualitative interviewsand post-interview questionnaires were conducted with exposed participants, controlparticipants, and nonparticipants (n=50, total). Questions were included aboutrespondents’ satisfaction with information they had received or gathered about dioxins,their subjective judgments of health risk from dioxins, and how difficult it wasfor them to make these risk judgments. Preliminary analysis of these interviews andquestionnaires supports the hypothesis that those who feel they are able to make subjectivejudgments about their health risk (regardless of whether they think their risk88is high or low) are more satisfied with the information they have received. To morequantitatively assess this hypothesis, a third and final phase of data collection willinclude similar questions in a closed-ended questionnaire mailed to a larger sample ofthe populations of interest. Results will have important implications for communityexposure assessment studies and for other contexts in which hazard and exposureinformation is communicated, including worker and community right to know.W1-G.2 Dieckmann NF, Gregory R, Peters E, Tusler M; ndieckmann@decisionresearch.orgDecision Research, Ohio State UniversityEXPLORING THE USE OF EVALUATIVE LABELS TO INCREASE THESALIENCY OF UNCERTAINTY INFORMATIONPresenting numerical representations along with evaluative labels (e.g., Excellent-Pooror color coding) has been suggested as a way to simplify the comprehensionand use of uncertainty information in the risk management context. In two experimentswe explore the effects of adding evaluative labels to improve the understandingand use of uncertainty. Participants were presented with scenarios and consequencetables describing environmental management problems. Our main goal was to examinehow laypeople perceive and use numerical uncertainty information with and withoutevaluative labels. We also explored whether people who vary in numeracy perceiveand use this uncertainty in different ways. Our results suggest that evaluative labelsprovide a very salient source of information for a lay user. In Study 1, we showed thatthe evaluative labels were perceived as easy to use and appeared to be used even inthe presence of a numerical uncertainty range. In Study 2, we found that people witheconomically leaning values, that should prefer the option with the best outcomes interms of costs, were drawn by the evaluative labels to choose the option that was leastfavorable in terms of costs. This effect was particularly strong for the less numerate.Thus, lay people may put undue weight on information highlighted by an evaluativelabel even if it is not the most important factor with respect to a decision makersvalues. The simplicity and power of evaluative labels is a double-edged sword. Communicatorsneed to think hard about how different uncertainty representations canlead to different reasoning strategies on the part of decision makers. Both numericalpresentations and evaluative labels are important tools. The best presentation methoddepends on what you want people to know and what types of decision strategies youwant to prompt.