On interpretative risk perception research: Some reflections on its origins; its nature; and its possible applications in risk communication practice

The use of risk communication as a policy tool has become increasingly important in areas as diverse as emergency planning and health communication, and including aspects of many of the leading issues of the day. Its use, as a part of institutional attempts to inform and influence lay behaviour, is predicated upon a variety of models of how people make sense of risk-related issues. Many such models are based upon a cognitive information-processing metaphor, and have an underlying instrumental nature that assumes recipients ‘would behave responsibly if only they knew the facts’. In this paper, we discuss some alternative, sociological, approaches to risk perception that have developed over the last decade, in which resulting lay behaviours are recognised as being embedded within a matrix of everyday associations, preferred ways of life, trust relations, economic constraints and emotional commitments. In particular, we will be concerned with the emergence of so-called ‘interpretative’ risk perception research. In so doing, we draw particular attention to the relevance of Ryle's notion of ‘thick description’ in seeking to investigate the nature of practical reasoning about risk issues. We illustrate some of these themes by revisiting, and re-analysing, a particularly rich 10-year-old corpus of largely unpublished comparative UK and Spanish data, generated by citizens living in communities geographically close to potentially hazardous industrial facilities.