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OCR for page 54
3
Conflict About Hazards and Risks
Conflict within our society about technological choices, focusing
on hazards and risks, is an essential part of the environment in which
those choices are debated and made (e.g., Dickson, 1984; Lawless,
1977; Mazur, 1981; Nelkin, 1979a).i That is, conflict is an essen-
tial part of the environment of risk communication. This chapter
discusses the reasons communication about hazards and risks in the
U.S. political system has become so contentious over the last two
decades. It identifies the major sources of this increasing conflict and
briefly explores the nature of that conflict. Risk communication is
profoundly affected by the conflictual atmosphere in which it occurs.
IS RISE INCREASING OR DECREASING?
For many observers the central dispute about technology and
risk concerns whether risk is increasing or decreasing (e.g., National
Research Council, 1982~. In some accounts people are concerned
about the risks of technology because there is an increasing threat
of technological disaster; in other accounts, public concern flies in
the face of a demonstrable decrease in net risk to human health and
survival. Although we do not believe this debate to be productive
for risk communication, a brief and simplified account of it will serve
to introduce the discussion that follows, concerning the sources of
increasing conflict about technological choices.
54
OCR for page 55
CONFLICT ABOUT HAZARDS AND RISKS
TABLE 3.1 Life Expectancies in the United States, 1900-1984
White Male Black Malea White Female Black Femalea
Life Expectancy at Birth
1900-1902 48.2 32.5 51.1 35.0
1949-1951 66.3 58.9 72.0 62.7
1984 71.8 65.6 78.7 73.7
Remaining Life Expectancy at Age 25
1900-1902 38.5 32.2 40.1 33.9
1949-1951 44.9 39.5 49.8 42.4
1984 48.7 43.1 55.0 50.7
aLife expectancy figures for 1949-1951 are for nonwhites.
SOURCE: Metropolitan Life Insurance Company Statistical Bulletin, 1987.
It Is the Safest of Times
55
Proponents of the view that this is the safest of times2 point out
that the best overall measure of health and safety risk is average life
expectancy. They note that during this century there have been dra-
matic increases in life expectancy even as the society has increased
its use of the chemicals and other hazardous substances that are the
subject of intense debate about risk. The increases have been marked
for women and men and for blacks and whites (see Table 3.1~. While
much of the increased longevity is due to declining infant mortality
and is probably unrelated to environmental and occupational health
hazards, improvements in life expectancy of young adults have also
been striking. Thus medical science, improved nutrition, water pu-
rification, and other advances have combined to give each person a
good chance at living a full life span. The data offer no indication
that epidemics of chemical-induced cancer or other technologically
borne scourges are increasing the risk of fatality.
Proponents of the view that risk is decreasing point out that
many of the hazardous substances now in the environment decrease
overall risk by replacing more dangerous substances. For instance,
chlorinated hydrocarbon solvents, which cause cancer in animals and
possibly humans as well, have replaced flammable ones, which caused
death by fire. Many other hazardous substances decrease risk by
reducing more serious preexisting hazards. Pesticides and herbicides
OCR for page 56
56
IMPROVING RISK COMMUNICATION
may cause cancer, but, in some parts of the world at least, they
have helped prevent famine. Water chlorination increases exposure
to carcinogens but decreases exposure to typhoid-causing bacteria
and other infectious agents.
Proponents of the view that technology improves safety conclude
that many people are becoming more and more concerned about
smaller and smaller risks. They see the gains from past technological
change as outweighing the new risks by a large margin, and they see
no reason the trend will not continue.
It Is the Riskiest of Times
Proponents of the view that this is the riskiest of times see mod-
ern technology as generating new threats to society and the earth's
life-support systems and as doing so at an accelerating pace. They
argue that because of the technological advances that have increased
life spans, population growth threatens more devastating famines
than the world has ever seen. They also note that the Tong-term bio-
Togical and ecological effects of rapid increases in the use of chemicals
are still unknown. To illustrate the reason for concern, they note that
serious hazards continue to be discovered a recent example is the
hazard to the earth's ozone layer from manufactured chIorofluoro-
carbons. They point out that the synergistic effects of technological
hazards remain almost entirely unstudied even though people are
rarely exposed to one hazard in isolation from others. They point to
a range of global environmental threats whose ultimate implications
for humanity are unknown but potentially catastrophic: the rapid
rate of extinction of species and the destruction of their habitats;
deforestation and decreases in biological diversity in the tropics; the
possibility of major climatic change due to human activity; and, of
course, the possibility of nuclear holocaust.
Proponents of the view that technology is increasing risks do
not see advances in life expectancy as a convincing counterargument.
They point out that many of the new risks are unlikely to be reflected
in current life expectancy data because they are so far only evident
in indicators of ecosystems and the geosphere. They note that the
new low-probability catastrophic risks that they consider important
cannot appear in life expectancy tables because the catastrophes
have not yet occurred. And they suggest that progress in raising life
expectancy, which has slowed since 1950, might have been greater
if it had not been for the new risks. Thus those who see risk as
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CONFLICT ABO UT HAZARDS AND RISKS
57
increasing call for tighter control over technology, introduction of
more environmentally benign technology, and abandonment of some
technologies considered particularly risky.
Understanding the Conflict
Although each of these views has some valid and convincing
evidence on its side, the dispute cannot be resolved by available
evidence. In fact, it may not ultimately be about evidence. At a
deeper level it is about what kinds of risks people want most to avoid,
what kinds of lives they want to lead, what they believe the future
will bring, and what the proper relationship is between humanity
and nature. Reviewing the evidence will not resolve the dispute-
in fact, debates over technology framed in this way seem only to
increase anger and frustration. But understanding the conflict may
be a necessary first step toward improving dialogue, that is, toward
making better risk communication possible.
To understand the conflict, it helps to begin by asking what has
changed in the relation of technology and society and what has not.
As we noted in Chapter 2, the existence of technological hazards is
nothing new. Whether such hazards present an increased net risk
is, of course, a matter of dispute. There is little doubt, however,
that the extent and intensity of conflict about technological hazards
have increased substantially over the past 30 years.
O~ ;_ 11-A ~libel ___1 at- __ ~n ~
This can be
al cue pressures gnat culminated in a Furry ot environmental
legislation in the late 1960s and the 1970s, in evidence of increasing
public opposition to nuclear power since the early 1970s (Ahearne,
1987; Freudenburg and Rosa, 1984; Hively, 1988), and in the con-
tinuing strong public support for environmental regulation during
tne Reagan years in the face of the administration's commitment
to deregulation (Dunlap, 1987~.3 The following sections elaborate on
the major factors contributing to intense conflict over technology and
on the nature of that conflict.
. ~ ~
CHANGES IN THE NATURE OF HAZARDS AND IN
KNOWLEDGE ABOUT THEM
The hazards recognized in modern living have changed in kind,
regardless of whether any particular type of risk has increased or
decreased. In addition, new knowledge about hazards and risks has
led people to think about them in new ways. The important changes
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58
IMPROVING RISK COMMUNICATION
described below give reason for a continuing high level of public
concern (Dunlap, 1987; Mitchell, 1980).
Increased Understanding of Hnmnn Influence on Hazards
Advances in science and technology have made clear that hu-
manity has much more to do with its own health and longevity
than was once believed. Many illnesses and deaths that were once
seen as inevitable, random, or divinely caused are now known to
have human origins. Modern science can detect anthropogenic toxic
substances at increasingly low concentrations and can trace their bi-
ological effects with animal experiments and epidemiological studies.
Modern techniques of detection and analysis can connect events over
great distances and through complex pathways, revealing the human
causes of hazards.
People are also increasingly aware that human action can avoid
or reduce risks. Individuals have learned that they can increase their
life expectancies by wearing seat belts, avoiding tobacco use, and
controlling their diets. Governments and firms can reduce human
health risks with pollution controls and improved safety measures in
industrial processes and consumer products. And, of course, medical
science continues to develop ways to prolong life. It is an irony of
progress that each success in prolonging and enhancing human life
brings increasing awareness that human action or inaction can
also be responsible for death.
Awareness of the human influence over life and death makes tech-
nological choices into moral issues. In most modern societies harm
to a person readily becomes a moral issue if a responsible party can
be identified. Thus people fee] morally obligated to donate blood or
bone marrow when they are made to understand that their particu-
lar type is needed to prolong life (Schwartz, 1977~. Similarly, people
who believe industrial firms are responsible for some cancers tend to
see them as morally obligated to ameliorate the harm (Stern et al.,
1986~. From such moral feelings comes the widespread sentiment for
using extraordinary, risky, and expensive measures to prolong lives
when nothing else is likely to work. By the same reasoning, reports
that the burning of coal in Ohio is killing fish in New York and may
be threatening human health can lead people to see the pollution of
· · ~
air as immoral.
In the U.S. and other legal systems, awareness of human influence
calls into action fundamental norms about responsibility, rights, and
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CONFLICT ABOUT HAZARDS AND RISKS
59
due process. When people who are perceived to be innocent are put
in jeopardy, discussions about intent, justice, blame, and punishment
are almost inevitable. What is at issue is no longer only whether an
activity makes people better or worse off but whether the changes are
fair and whether the responsible agent has the right to affect other
people's well-being.
Worsening Worst Cases
Modern technology, by making it possible for humans to alter
natural processes at the level of the geosphere, has made possible
disasters that could not even be fantasized a few generations ago.
Already, deforestation is disrupting huge ecosystems, and there is
evidence that it, combined with the burning of unprecedented quan-
tities of fossil fuel, is altering the earth's temperature and threat-
ening to raise the level of the oceans and disrupt the patterns of
temperature and precipitation on which world agriculture depends.
Although deforestation leading to climatic disruption is not new-it
is responsible for the present aridity in much of the Middle East
and China human alteration of climate has never before been pos-
sible on a global scale. There is dispute over the probability of a
climatic catastrophe, but little dispute that global climatic changes
of historic proportions are now possible as a result of human activity
(Jaeger, 1988~. Similarly, the threat to the earth's ozone layer sug-
gests the possibility of human-generated environmental damage on
an unprecedented scale. And, of course, the possibility of devastation
of whole nations by nuclear weapons is unprecedented.
Most of the unprecedented catastrophes scientists have described
have a very low probability of occurrence, but because the outcomes
are so undesirable the risks are worth considering carefully. However,
the low probability makes them hard to analyze. An example is major
disasters from nuclear power plant operation. The industry is too
young for the probability to be estimated accurately from experience;
yet indirect methods of estimation are highly uncertain. Thus people
are left with huge disasters to contemplate but no reliable guidance
about how seriously to take them.
With worsening worst cases, it makes sense to pay attention to
smaller and smaller probabilities and to smaller differences between
probability estimates. But most people have difficulty understanding
very low probabilities (see, e.g., Fischhoff et al., 1981b). They tend
to think in the categories of language (such as "never," "rarely,"
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60
IMPROVING RISK COMMUNICATION
"occasionally," "often," and so forth) rather than along the con-
tinuous dimensions of mathematics (cf. Starr and Whipple, 1980~.
For very low probability events, nonexperts tend to use two cat-
egories, "possible" and "effectively impossible." Thus the changes
that have made nightmares into possibilities may drastically alter
many people's thinking by making a qualitative change by making
them aware of a hazard where they had perceived none. People may
pay more attention to the size of the consequences and ignore both
the magnitude and the uncertainty of very low probability estimates.
The result would be a much-increased concern about catastrophic
risks and a corresponding increase in opposition to technologies that
pose them.
Unintended Side Effects
Technological activity has probably always had effects on people
who were not directly involved in it, but knowledge of the extent of
such effects has increased dramatically in this century. Technological
changes are accelerating, as are the materials ant] energy transforma-
tions that can disturb preexisting physical and biological systems and
affect human well-being. Although people have always been exposed
to the side effects of other people's activity, they are now aware of
being exposed to much more and at greater distances. There is in-
creasing evidence that technological activities can now affect people
around the earth by altering air quality, exposing them to ultraviolet
radiation, or changing climate.
When side effects spread more widely and when that change is
recognized, collective action often follows. The risk bearers tend to
take up common interest against the risk givers. And when the effects
extend across the boundaries of communities and then of nations,
the conflicts of interest often enter formal political and diplomatic
arenas or, if those are not available, find informal ways of gaining
wide attention. Thus increasing technological conflict is due in part
to the widening range of technology's effects and the greater social
awareness of the change.
Changing Portfolio of Hazards
The hazards society confronts today are different from those of
the past. As noted in Chapter 2, the principal threats to health,
especially among the more educated and politically active segments
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CONFLICT ABOUT HAZARDS AND RISKS
61
of the public, are now from chronic diseases rather than acute ill-
nesses and from illnesses now known to have long latency periods.
Sometimes decades pass between exposure ant] effect; sometimes the
effect manifests itself only in later generations. Whereas infectious
diseases can be convincingly linked to microorganisms in the body,
cancer and many other chronic diseases cannot, in general, be con-
clusively linked to causative agents.4 People are often unsure what
caused such illnesses. Moreover, if they are exposed to a hazard,
they cannot know whether they will become ill. People spend more
of their lives under a cloud: whenever they are exposed to a "probable
carcinogen" or other hazard with delayed potential effects, they may
worry about whether it will eventually harm them. If they become
ill, they can consider a range of hypotheses about human actions that
might have been to blame: past occupational exposure, dietary prac-
tice, air pollution, and so forth. Some people agonize over whether
they are guilty of causing their own illness; others conclude that they
are innocent victims of greed or negligence. The former conclusion
produces anxiety; the latter, whether correct or not in any particular
instance, motivates lawsuits and other forms of social conflict.
Hazards have also changed in that there is more knowledge-and
more widespread awareness of hazards to which people are exposed
but over which they have no control as individuals. Individuals on
their own are helpless to reduce the risks of nuclear war, depletion
of the ozone layer, and global climatic change. Media accounts make
people acutely aware of other hazards that strike more or less at
random, such as airplane hijackings and releases of toxic substances
such as at Bhopal or radioactivity such as at Chernobyl. People
have learned that some industrial chemicals are toxic but that for
many chemicals now widely used in commerce in the United States
little is known about whether they threaten human health (National
Research Council, 1984~. The anxiety that comes from awareness
of apparently uncontrollable risks derives in large part from a sense
of uncertainty. People may get the sense that past experience-
including longevity tables may not provide a reliable estimate of
the risks they face.
For highly uncertain risks it is difficult to refute extreme esti-
mates of their magnitude. Concerns may persist precisely because of
the uncertainty. An example is the concern that AIDS may be trans-
mitted by mosquitoes. While technical experts agree that mosquito
transmission is too improbable to worry about, a skeptic can main-
tain that it has not been proven impossible. Additionally, highly
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62
IMPROVING RISK COMMUNICATION
uncertain risks generate special conflicts about their management,
with decision makers disagreeing widely about how large a margin of
safety should be allowed to protect against the occurrence of disas-
trous consequences that they agree are unlikely.
CHANGES IN U.S. SOCIETY
Technological decisions have become more controversial in part
because U.S. society has changed in several ways in the era since
World War IT.
Increasing Affluence
For most of those who participate actively in American politics,
economic security has allowed certain basic human concerns to recede
from awareness and to be replaced by other more indirect threats to
personal well-being, including concerns about technology and risk.
More and more people have attained a level of economic security
that allows them to take up concerns beyond those of feeding and
housing themselves and their families, securing basic health care, and
providing for these security needs for their old age. And, regardless
of socioeconomic level, people whose chief personal values extend
beyond personal security are more likely to be concerned with en-
vironmental problems than the average citizen (DunIap et al., 1983;
Inglehart, 1977~. Thus it is not surprising that affluence has brought
increasing concern about the risks of technology.
Increasing Dependence of the Economy on Technology
The U.S. and world economies have come to depend increasingly
on advanced technology for the production of food (petrochemicals) j
health care (drugs and other medical technologies), communication
(computers and information transmission technology), transporta-
tion (jet aircraft), manufactured goods (automation and electric
power technologies), and, of course, military security. Such tech-
nologies have increasingly been controlled by large, politically and
economically powerful organizations with vested interests in discov-
ering, developing, and implementing them. They are also supported
by individuals who benefit from them economically or in other ways.
The new technologies offer great benefits to their sponsors in money
or political power and potential benefits and risks to society that may
also be large-but poorly understood. The sponsoring organizations
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CONFLICT ABOUT HAZARDS AND RISKS
63
need public acquiescence to achieve their technological aims, but for
the reasons discussed below that acquiescence has become more dif-
ficult to achieve. At the same time proposals to restrict technologies
typically meet intense opposition from powerful proponents.
Distrust of Institutions
Public opinion polling data indicate that there has been a "sharp
decline of public faith in government, business, and labor since the
mid-1960s" (Lipset and Schneider, 1987:40~. The decline was espe-
cially rapid between 1964 and 1975. Other polls have shown similar
results, but the decline has been partially reversed more recently
(Lipset and Schneider, 1987~. The decline in trust in major institu-
tions was in sharp contrast to the especially low level of criticism,
distrust, and rebellion in the 1950s (Schudson, 1978~. It was, no
doubt, influenced by a series of formative political events of the
1960s and early 1970s. The civil rights movement, the war in Viet-
nam and the protest against it, the assassinations of three major
national leaders, and, finally, the Watergate scandal all forced atten-
tive people to look at the dark side of our national character and
national institutions.5 A climate developed in which major decisions
by government and industry, including decisions about technology,
were increasingly open to question.
The Environmental Movement
A social movement concerned with environmental protection de-
veloped in the 1960s in the United States and has since become a
regular participant in technological debates. Influenced by new scien-
tific knowledge conveyed in works like Silent Spring (Carson, 1962),
large numbers of ordinary people saw for the first time that their
personal interests or values were affected by the way society used
and regulated technology. They expressed their concerns through
environmental and related organizations and by direct pressure on
government for action. Although environmental organizations were
not new on the American scene, those that had existed before the
1960s, such as the Audubon Society, the Nature Conservancy, and
the Sierra Club, had focused mainly on the conservation of wildlife
and wilderness. The new organizations, and to some extent the
old ones through changes in their political agendas, advanced a new
brand of environmentalism concerned with threats to ecosystems and
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64
IMPROVING RISK COMMUNICATION
global and regional life-support systems and with the protection of
people from technologically based threats to health and well-being
(Hays, 1987~. The new environmental organizations and their po-
litical allies gained widespread public support and raised funds to
lobby, to conduct independent scientific analyses of technological is-
sues, to participate in regulatory decision processes on matters of
concern to their supporters, and to challenge government and corpo-
rate decisions in court. They have became an institutional presence
in opposition to a range of efforts by industry and government to im-
plement controversial new technologies and to further spread existing
ones.6
New Public Institutions
During the 1960s and 1970s national institutions were being re-
structured to pay more attention to social goals, including improved
management of societally shared risks. Beginning with passage of the
National Environmental Protection Act in 1969, several new govern-
ment bodies, such as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
t~Y`U', the occupational gaiety and Health Administration (1970),
the Consumer Product Safety Commission (1972), the Nuclear Reg-
ulatory Commission (1975), the Office of Technology Assessment
(19721 and the Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promm
, ~ A_~\ . . ~ . . .
,,
tion (1984), were created to promote and protect public safety and
health in specific areas of risk. Courts began to require that med-
ical professionals provide patients with better information to guide
their decisions about their treatment, and formal procedures for "in-
formed consent" came into being (Applebaum et al., 1987; Faden en cl
Beauchamp, 1986~. Federal agencies, for their part, began to make
more information about risk available to the public, for instance
by requiring recor~keeping of the life histories of toxic substances.
These changes created new public institutions whose purpose was to
make technological decisions in the public arena and that resulted in
new settings for conflict.
POLITICIZATION OF THE TECHNOLOGICAL DEBATE
The above changes in risks, knowledge, and society have con-
tributed to the increasing conflict about technology in recent decades.
The benefits of technology have increased, but many people believe
the risks have as well. The hazards confront more people than ever
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r
CONFLICT ABOUT HAZARDS AND RISKS
65
before (even if the risks may be less), and they have gained the atten-
tion of a wider range of political actors. The attendant choices have
huge potential effects on the distribution of wealth, health, and even
political power in society. It is no wonder, then, that technological
choices have come to concern more people and that the nature of
those choices has come to be seen in a different light. As traditional
political issues such as public health, social equity, and due process
became more prominent in technological decision making, decisions
that had been treated as essentially technical and economic, to be de-
cided by executives of firms and government agencies with the advice
of experts, came to be seen as also being essentially political (Dietz
et al., 1989~. The trend toward public involvement can be seen in a
recent expansion of "right-to-know" legislation, the effect of which
is to disseminate information that citizens can use to heighten their
political involvement. The redefinition of environmental problems as
political is evident in a number of changes in the political system, as
described below.
Concepts of Regulation
Changes in federal law in the mid-1960s transformed the judicial
concept of public interest as used in administrative law in regard to
regulatory agencies. Regulatory proceedings were opened to more
than just the parties who suffer direct legal injury from government
action (Office of Communication of the United Church of Christ v.
Federal Communications Commission, 1966; Scenic Hudson Preser-
vation Conference v. Federal Power Commission, 1965~. The New
Deal notion of a regulatory agency as the embodiment of the public
interest gave way to a concept of the regulatory agency as a political,
quasi-legisTative forum for the meeting of competing interests (Ack-
erman and Hassler, 1977~. It is no wonder, then, that the EPA faced
a rapid rise in the number of civil lawsuits challenging its regulations,
from under 20 in 1973 to nearly 500 in 1978 (O'Brien and Marchand,
1982:80~.
Tort Law
Tort law has changed, broadening the ability of different kinds
of people and groups to bring legal action and creating new ways for
plaintiffs to sue successfully even when there are formidable difficul-
ties involved in determining who is responsible for an injury to the
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IMPROVING RISK COMMUNICATION
plaintiff. In the past 30 years private-law adjudication has moved
away from caveat emptor and related rules to permit greater access
to the judicial arena and to apply more flexible doctrines regard-
ing compensation for environmentally caused damages to health and
safety (O'Brien and Marchand, 1982~. In the California Supreme
Court decision in the case of SindLell v. Abbott L`aboratories, for in-
stance (a decision the U.S. Supreme Court let stand in 1980), the
court allowed mothers whose children had suffered injury because of
the mother's use of diethylstilbestro! (DES) to recover damages with-
out being able to identify a particular manufacturer as responsible
for the injury. The plaintiffs were allowed to recover by suing those
manufacturers who collectively represented a major share of the mar-
ket for the product that caused the injury (O'Brien and Marchand,
1982~.
Regulatory Procedures
Regulatory rule making over the past two decades has evolved
a set of procedures that guarantees a variety of interested parties
the opportunity to comment on proposed rules and that makes it in-
creasingly likely that regulators will have to address those comments
as they justify their decisions (Schmanc~t, 1984~. Federal agencies
are required by the courts to prepare detailed scientific analyses in
support of regulatory actions. These changes occurred in response to
increasing conflict about risk and created a channel for the expression
of opposition to government agencies' positions. They imposed some
limits on what opponents could legitimately raise as objections, but
at the same time the new procedures gave the opponents predictable
access to the decision process and new opportunities to challenge
decisions in court.
Politically Potent Symbolic Events
A number of incidents have received widespread attention and
have become cognitive markers of danger for many people. Just
as "Watergate" is synonymous for many with governmental malfea-
sance, so "Three Mile Island" has come to represent the dangers
of high technology. "Bhop al," "Chernobyl," and "Love Canal" are
other such symbols. These reach out beyond the immediate media
coverage they receive to become part of the cultural consciousness of
many people, even those who know little of or paid little attention to
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CONFLICT ABOUT HAZARDS AND RISKS
67
the original incidents (SIovic, 1987~. As a result, the mere mention
of these incidents can be a trigger for argument.
Increased Focus on Science In Technological Debates
The laws and procedures that control governmental decisions
about technology in the United States have come increasingly to de-
mand scientific and technical knowledge. Some regulations require
government to determine whether a particular risk exists and to act
accordingly; others require a determination of the "best available
technology"; and others explicitly require a weighing of costs and
benefits. The National Environmental Policy Act requires the prepa-
ration of careful assessments of the environmental and socioeconomic
impacts of major technological choices. All these developments put
science and scientific disagreements at the center of technological
debates. Because of the difficulty, as discussed in Chapter 2, of gath-
ering and interpreting all the scientific knowledge relevant to modern
technological decisions, there is considerable room for scientists to
disagree. When a decision that may have major political effects by
altering the distribution of money, power, and well-being in soci-
ety is made through procedures that emphasize scientific judgment,
scientific disagreements tend to become proxies for political disagree-
ments, and political adversaries often express their positions in the
language of science (Dickson, 1984; Mazur, 1981; Nelkin, 1979a). In
this way the inherent difficulty of understanding technological choices
combines with the political importance of their effects to multiply
the intensity of conflict.
Institutionalization of Scientific Conflict
Partly because regulatory decisions now rely so heavily on the
evaluation of scientific knowledge, divisions in the scientific commu-
nity have become increasingly public. Conflicts that might once have
been contained within professional societies now appear occasionally
as front-page news. Some environmental organizations and groups
of scientists, such as the Federation of American Scientists, whose
members share common concerns about controversial technologies,
have built scientific resources that allow them to advocate political
choices in the technical language of risk and benefit analysis that
statutes and regulatory procedures often require. Not to be out-
done, industry-based groups have increased their capability to do
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IMPROVING RISK COMMUNICATION
"regulatory science" in support of their positions on the same issues.
Thus disagreements between scientists have gained an institutional
place in the political debate, with scientists whose analyses support
particular positions presenting their judgments on behalf of groups
advocating those positions (Schmandt, 1984~.
IMPLICATIONS OF CONFLICT FOR COMMUNICATION
The above discussion makes clear that many factors have con-
tributed to increasing social conflict over hazards and risks. The
conflict itself is a multifaceted one. A review of the environmental
policy literature has identified four distinct aspects of risk conflicts, as
described below. According to a recent survey of scientists, lawyers,
and others whose careers are largely devoted to thinking, researching,
and debating about technological choices, each of these is a major
source of controversy about environmental risk (Dietz and Rycroft,
1987; Dietz et al., 1988~.7 This section distinguishes these four as-
pects of technological conflict and discusses the implications of each
for risk communication.
Differential Enowledge
One source of conflict about risk is that experts and nonexperts
know different things about the risks and benefits of technology. In
particular, technical experts have specialized knowledge about the
nature of both the hazards and their benefits that nonexperts, lack-
ing this knowledge, may dispute. Conversely, nonexperts sometimes
have local knowledge about exposures or the practical operation of a
hazardous activity that technical experts do not share. When conflict
arises mainly from differential knowledge, risk messages focused on
information, which promote the sharing of knowledge, can improve
the risk communication process. This realization underlies proposals
to design messages that would explain to nonexperts in a clear and
simple format what scientists and technologists know about partic-
ular risks. It also provides justification for the flow of informational
messages from nonexperts to experts. In conflicts that arise from
differential knowleclge, better sharing of knowledge may also help
reduce the conflict. However, when a conflict is in large part based
on other factors, sharing of knowledge may not resolve it. It may
even adversely affect the risk communication process if it is perceived
as a diversion from the real issues.
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CONFLICT ABOUT HAZARDS AND RISKS
69
A second aspect of differential knowledge and conflict is the
differences in the degree of understanding in various croups tvDicallv
involved in risk issues. lntormat~on simply made available to the
public through the mass media and other channels is typically taken
up more readily by those with high, rather than Tow, socioeconomic
status because the former usually have a higher level of education,
enabling them to understand technical material more easily. This
leads to what is called a knowledge gap. But the presence of a conflict
can change this situation. In certain circumstances the presence of
conflict might be seen as positive because it effectively increases the
number of people who become informed about the issues involved.
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T ~. · · ~
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Vested Interests
Those who bear the risks of a technology are not always the same
people who gain the benefits, and, when the risks and benefits are
distributed in unequal proportion, those holding different interests
come into conflict. This kind of conflict is most clearly evident
in decisions about the siting of locally unwanted facilities such as
hazardous waste sites, power lines, and radioactive waste repositories,
but it is characteristic of other conflicts about risk as well. When
a conflict is based in large part on vested interest, risk messages
can be helpful if they clarify what different groups' interests are
and describe how the available options would affect each of those
interests. Such messages improve risk communication by providing
· r ·~ ' I' 'A , But they often do
not resolve conflict. Even messages that simply describe scientific
information can exacerbate conflict if the information helps clarify
who stands to win or lose.
Information relevant to the choices at h an r1
Value Differences
Differences in values also underlie conflict about risk. For in-
stance, some people may believe that a potential catastrophe should
be avoided by not adopting a technology that might produce it
__1 e] ~ 1 "d ~ . ~
wane orners may believe that potential problems could be solved
after the technology is implemented but before the problems become
too serious e In trade-offs between economic growth and threats to
health and to esthetic, ecological, or community values, political
participants who expect the same outcome may still disagree with
each other because what they may gain or lose does not have the
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70
IMPROVING RISK COMMUNICATION
same value to each of them. The source of such disputes may lie in
people's relative preferences for values (e.g., money versus beauty),
their beliefs in society's ability to control technologies once intro-
duced, or their predispositions about how much risk to take under
conditions of uncertainty. When a conflict is based in large part on
differences in values, the following types of messages can make risk
communication more successful: statements identifying the values at
stake, arguments about which values deserve the most weight, and
analyses of how each available option would affect different values.
As with conflicts based on different interests, messages that improve
knowledge relevant to the choices at hand and that therefore raise
the quality of risk communication can at the same time make the
conflict more intense. Even messages describing scientific analysis
can have this effect, by clarifying which values an alternative would
advance or impede.
Mistrust of Expert Enowledge as Interest Serving
Public mistrust of information from government and industry
sources also underlies conflict about technology. Many people are
aware that experts can be found who will support nearly any position
in a technological debate. They realize that industry groups tend to
produce only those scientific arguments that advance their goals and
that environmental groups do the same. They know that even the
federal government has been subject to strong accusations that its
scientific analyses have been influenced by political pressure from
various interest groups (e.g., Nelkin and Brown, 1984; Smith, 1983~.
Thus the statements of scientific experts in risk debates are seen by
the skeptical parts of the public as reflecting political positions rather
than unbiased assessments. Particular types of messages cannot by
themselves alleviate mistrust, although altered procedures for the
design of risk messages may help (see Chapters 6 and 7~. Rather,
the effect of mistrust is to make communication more difficult in all
contexts.
Note for Risk Message Designers
In most risk debates some participants are concerned with nar-
rower issues of risk analysis, some with interests, some with value
questions, and some with issues of trust. For this reason, different
participants want to send and receive different kinds of risk mes-
sages, and the risk communication process includes the full range of
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CONFLICT ABOUT HAZARDS AND RISKS
71
types of messages mentioned here scientific analyses, expressions
of interest and value, and arguments about which values to favor.
The designers of risk messages need to be aware that a program of
messages that addresses one source of conflict may fail to address
other sources. Thus someone who designs a message to eliminate
differential knowledge may find an audience concerned with interests
or values or one that mistrusts the message source and the message
may not have the desired effect. Such a message may even intensify
conflict because the audience sees it as irrelevant or as a diversion
from what it considers to be the main issue.
Risk communication is difficult in part because risk messages
often seem to operate at cross-purposes. The next chapter distin-
guishes the major settings of risk communication and the major
purposes for risk messages. It explores the issue of what techniques
are appropriate for risk messages, particularly when the purpose is
to influence the recipients' beliefs or actions.
NOTES
1. Conflict also occurs about the benefits of technological choices. This
chapter discusses the risks because they have usually been the focus of the most
intense convict.
2. The headings "It is the safest of times and Lit is the riskiest of times"
are quoted from Denton Morrison's paper, `'A Tale of Two Toxicities" (1987~.
3. Although public support for increased environmental regulation is
strong, as evidenced by direct questions on opinion surveys, environmental
problems are not usually mentioned with great frequency in response to open-
ended questions such as, "What are the three most important problems facing
the nations
4. Some types of cancer are clearly linked to chemical exposures: mesothe-
lioma and asbestos, vaginal cancer and diethylstilbestrol (DES), bladder cancer
and benzidine dyes. In these situations the inference about possible causal
agents involves assessment of statistical evidence (e.g., epidemiological studies)
and biological evidence on the plausibility of the linkage between agent and
disease [e.g., gasoline vapors cause kidney tumors in male rats, but the mecha-
nism is not believed applicable to human kidney cancer (EPA Science Advisory
Board, 1988~.
5. Research on the ways social movements mobilize citizens' attention and
participation has recently been reviewed by Cohen (1985) and Jenkins (1983~.
6. Recent studies on the growth of the environmental movement include
those by Hays (1987), Milbrath (1984), and Touraine et al. (1983~.
7. That is, each of these four aspects of conflict was rated as a major
source of controversy about environmental risk by a majority of the "risk
professionals" in the survey sample.
Representative terms from entire chapter:
life expectancy
