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hazards, such as fl ood plain mapping, fl ood proofi ng, fl ood insurance and land-use
planning. White's emphasis on the central role of perception in infl uencing individ-
ual and institutional responses to environment hazards inspired wealth of sub-
sequent academic research on risk perception and behavioural response (White,
1974; Kasperson, et al., 1988; Mileti, 1999). It has also found increasing resonance
in policy circles (Platt, 1986). Nevertheless, nearly half a century after his initial
research, White was still decrying the over-reliance on levees in the Mississippi
basin, which encouraged a false sense of security and the overdevelopment of haz-
ardous fl ood plains (Myers and White 1993). Reviewing disaster policies across the
United States, Mileti (1999) called for a move away from the arrogant attitude of
controlling nature and towards living and adjusting to hazards. In the context of
earthquakes in California for instance, he recommended microseismic hazard
mapping, public education, and autonomous instead of integrated utility systems,
so that in the event of an earthquake damage to one part of an integrated utility
system did not have amplifi ed effects on a much larger area.
In the 1960s, natural hazard researchers developed the fi rst methods for measur-
ing public perceptions of risk. Saarinen (1966), for example, used questionnaires to
study farmers' perception of drought in the Great Plains of the United States and
their role in informing decisions about behavioural responses such as varying crop-
ping patterns or taking out crop insurance. At an international scale White (1974)
undertook an international multi-country study on hazard perception to compare
attitudes towards hazards and prospective adjustments across cultures. The study
was pioneering in using a standard questionnaire across cultures, in addition to
defi ning important parameters for perception studies in hazards research.
Another important area of research pioneered by this behavioural tradition is
risk communication and its effects in changing behaviour. For example, Crozier
et al. (2005) analyzed the impact of earthquake hazard zone information both on
people's perception of likely damage from the hazard and on their possible adjust-
ments to it. Controlling for demographic factors and social class, they found that
residents in low risk zones deemed the earthquake risk manageable when given
information about the hazard. In high-risk zones, however, information led to
responses indicating a sense of resignation and fatalism in the face of the hazard.
This practical concern with the potential for different kinds of information to
change attitudes and behaviours to risk drew some of its inspiration from the
American Pragmatist tradition of philosophy, which emphasised the importance of
scientifi c research to inform practical action and democratic debate about hazards
and their management (Wescoat, 1992).
The early work of hazards researchers on public perceptions of environmental
hazards also informed research on technological hazards that blossomed through
the 1970s in the wake of increasingly vocal public opposition to nuclear power in
particular. Consistent with their pragmatic orientation, many behaviourists were
concerned with the information needs and policies for mitigating technological risks.
In this regard one of the central issues was the dissonance between expert views of
technological risks and the public perception and reaction towards them (Slovic,
1987). Earlier on Starr (1969) pointed to the distinction between voluntary and
involuntary risk, positing that people are much more likely to accept risks they take
on voluntarily, such as from driving or smoking, than risks imposed on them invol-
untarily from outside, such as the location of a nuclear power facility in their com-
munity. Kasperson et al. (1988) proposed a framework of social amplifi cation of
