IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/jriskr/v15y2012i7p755-769.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Old and new sources of risk: a study of societal risk perception in Finland

Author

Listed:
  • Pekka Räsänen
  • Matti Näsi
  • Outi Sarpila

Abstract

It has been argued that many of the present-day societies are witnessing the emergence of new types of concerns alongside the more traditional sources of distress. However, little research has focused on the perception of these new types of risks. This paper examines the risk perceptions across adult population in Finland. We compare the average ratings of different types of risks and then examine how much socio-demographic disparities exist among these ratings. Our data are derived from a nationally representative mail survey collected in the fall of 2009. The survey gave a response rate of 49% ( n = 1202). Our findings show that there are differences in the risk perceptions between different types of risks. Socio-demographic differences matter, as age, gender and place of residence in particular appear as significant determinants of risk perception. Further on, women and older respondents rate international and traditional risks as well as media and pornography as more of a concern compared to men and younger respondents. Although existing theoretical literature suggests there to be only minor differences in risk perception between population groups, this study seeks to better understand what sort of differences there really exists.

Suggested Citation

  • Pekka Räsänen & Matti Näsi & Outi Sarpila, 2012. "Old and new sources of risk: a study of societal risk perception in Finland," Journal of Risk Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 15(7), pages 755-769, August.
  • Handle: RePEc:taf:jriskr:v:15:y:2012:i:7:p:755-769
    DOI: 10.1080/13669877.2012.657218
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13669877.2012.657218
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/13669877.2012.657218?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Michael Förster, 1994. "Measurement of Low Incomes and Poverty in A Perspective of International Comparisons," OECD Labour Market and Social Policy Occasional Papers 14, OECD Publishing.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Yanbo Zhang & Yibao Wang & Ahmad Bayiz Ahmad & Ashfaq Ahmad Shah & Wen Qing, 2021. "How Do Individual-Level Characteristics Influence Cross-Domain Risk Perceptions Among Chinese Urban Residents?," SAGE Open, , vol. 11(2), pages 21582440211, April.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Saito, Masashige & Kondo, Naoki & Kondo, Katsunori & Ojima, Toshiyuki & Hirai, Hiroshi, 2012. "Gender differences on the impacts of social exclusion on mortality among older Japanese: AGES cohort study," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 75(5), pages 940-945.
    2. Whitehouse, Edward, 2000. "How Poor are the Old? A Survey of Evidence from 44 Countries," MPRA Paper 14177, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. Leonardo Gasparini & Leopoldo Tornarolli, 2015. "A review of the OECD Income Distribution Database," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 13(4), pages 579-602, December.
    4. Mladovsky, Philipa & Soors, Werner & Ndiaye, Pascal & Ndiaye, Alfred & Criel, Bart, 2014. "Can social capital help explain enrolment (or lack thereof) in community-based health insurance? Results of an exploratory mixed methods study from Senegal," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 101(C), pages 18-27.
    5. Disney, Richard & Whitehouse, Edward, 2001. "Cross-country comparisons of pensioners’ incomes," MPRA Paper 16345, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    6. Frahan, Bruno Henry de & Nkunzimana, Tharcisse & De Blander, Rembert & Gaspart, Frederic & Sumner, Daniel A., 2008. "Farm Household Incomes And Reforming The Cap," 109th Seminar, November 20-21, 2008, Viterbo, Italy 44814, European Association of Agricultural Economists.
    7. Thiele, Silke, 2008. "Elastizitäten der Nachfrage privater Haushalte nach Nahrungsmitteln – Schätzung eines AIDS auf Basis der Einkommens- und Verbrauchsstichprobe 2003," German Journal of Agricultural Economics, Humboldt-Universitaet zu Berlin, Department for Agricultural Economics, vol. 57(05), pages 1-11.
    8. Kraus, Margit & Hölsch, Katja, 2003. "Poverty Alleviation and the Degree of Centralisation in European Schemes of Social Assistance," ZEW Discussion Papers 03-16, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.
    9. Álvaro José Altamirano Montoya & Karla Maria Damiano Teixeira, 2017. "Multidimensional Poverty in Nicaragua: Are Female-Headed Households Better Off?," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 132(3), pages 1037-1063, July.
    10. Mladovsky, Philipa, 2014. "Why do people drop out of community-based health insurance? Findings from an exploratory household survey in Senegal," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 107(C), pages 78-88.
    11. Thiele, Silke, 2001. "Ausgaben- und Preiselastizitäten der Nahrungsmittelnachfrage auf Basis von Querschnittsdaten: Eine Systemschätzung für die Bundesrepublik Deutschland," German Journal of Agricultural Economics, Humboldt-Universitaet zu Berlin, Department for Agricultural Economics, vol. 50(02), pages 1-8.
    12. Margit Kraus & Katja H lsch, 2003. "Poverty Alleviation and the Degree of Centralisation in European Schemes of Social Assistance," LIS Working papers 342, LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg.
    13. Iryna Kyzyma, 2020. "How Poor Are the Poor? Looking beyond the Binary Measure of Income Poverty," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 18(4), pages 525-549, December.
    14. Svetlana Misihina, 2011. "The Social Support for the Vulnerable Population Groups," Research Paper Series, Gaidar Institute for Economic Policy, issue 154P.
    15. Lee, Juyeon & Kim, Myoung-Hee, 2017. "The effect of employment transitions on physical health among the elderly in South Korea: A longitudinal analysis of the Korean Retirement and Income Study," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 181(C), pages 122-130.
    16. Cristina Solera, 1998. "Income Transfers and Support for Mothers Employment: The Link to Family Poverty Risks. A Comparison between Italy, Sweden and the UK," LIS Working papers 192, LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg.
    17. Katja Hoelsch & Margit Kraus, 2003. "Poverty Alleviation and the Degree of Centralisation in European Schemes of Social Assistance," Diskussionspapiere aus dem Institut für Volkswirtschaftslehre der Universität Hohenheim 219/2003, Department of Economics, University of Hohenheim, Germany.
    18. Mladovsky, Philipa, 2014. "Why do people drop out of community-based health insurance?: findings from an exploratory household survey in Senegal," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 55820, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    19. Salverda, Wiemer & Checchi, Daniele, 2014. "Labour-Market Institutions and the Dispersion of Wage Earnings," IZA Discussion Papers 8220, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    20. Pascal Petit, 1999. "Sectoral Patterns of Distribution in Slowly Growing Economies: The case of nine OECD countries in the 1980s and 1990s," International Review of Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 13(3), pages 333-351.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:jriskr:v:15:y:2012:i:7:p:755-769. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/RJRR20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.