Effects of level of severity and category type on perceptions of hazardousness

Perceptions of hazardousness have been shown to be an important factor in precautionary behavior and warning research. People report they are more likely and more willing to notice, read, comply, and look for warnings for products they perceive as hazardous. Two variables which have been shown to accurately predict people's perceptions of hazard include perceptions of the severity of the potential outcome of a situation and perceptions of the likelihood of a mishap occurring in a particular situation. Two major groups of researchers focusing on severity and likelihood as predictors of hazard perception have found discrepant results, each finding one variable to be more important than the other. The present study attempted to clear up some of these discrepant findings by addressing some of the problems with these studies and some of the questions they bring up which were left unanswered. The following study examined the effects of the degree of severity of items on perceptions of hazardousness and attempted to investigate if the level of severity of the items had any effect on the importance of severity verses likelihood as predictors of hazard perception. The study also investigated if the types of items, namely consumer products, verses activities, verses technologies, had any effect on the overall perception of hazardousness or the importance of severity verses likelihood as predictors of hazard perception. In addition, the study employed a different testing method of assessing perceptions of hazardousness than those used in previous studies. As predicted, category type was found to have no effect on overall perceptions of hazardousness nor on the importance of severity verses likelihood as predictors of hazard perception. As expected, ratings of hazard perception increased as the level of severity of the items increased. Also as predicted, likelihood was chosen significantly more often than severity as a predictor of perceived hazardousness for the high severity items. Implications, problems, and suggestions for future research are discussed.