Processing of Information from Risk Maps in India and Germany: The Influence of Cognitive Reflection, Numeracy, and Experience

The use of risk maps is widespread and also mentioned in risk management standards. These visualizations display sets of risks by plotting each risk along two axes, representing the probability of occurrence and impact. Using an eye-tracking methodology, data on the cognitive processing of information from such risk maps were collected in order to examine why certain decisions are taken and what may influence their comprehension of this information. Data were collected from German and Indian participants. Those two countries are interesting for this study, as they differ greatly in several relevant domains like uncertainty avoidance or individualism. We found that individuals are generally able to perform a visual search task using a risk map but have more difficulty in making comparisons between two risks based on this type of visualization. The findings suggest that performance was related to cognitive reflection and that participants who reflected more on their decisions had a higher share of their fixations on target regions. In line with existing research, there seems to be evidence to support that cultural influences are at play when people work with risk maps, as Indians paid more attention to the context of the risk map’s target region. The influence of familiarity with working with risk maps was unclear, as there were some differences in eye movements visible but not for all variants.