Cross-Cultural Risk Perception demonstrates the richness and wealth of theoretical insights and practical information that risk perception studies can offer to policy makers, risk experts, and interested parties. The book begins with an extended introduction summarizing the state of the art in risk perception research and core issues of cross-cultural comparisons. The main body of the book consists of four cross-cultural studies on public attitudes towards risk in different countries, including the United States, Australia, New Zealand, France, Germany, Sweden, Bulgaria, Romania,...

Japanese government planners set out in the 1960s to build a barrage on the Nagara River, one of the last major free?owing rivers in Japan. Conceived during a period of rapid growth in the Japanese economy, the barrage was part of a national effort to ensure adequate water supplies for future economic development as well as to reduce ?oodingrisks to downstream communities. A string of lawsuits brought by groups concerned about the impact of the dam on ecological and ?sheries - sourcesresulted incostlydelays: thedamwasnotcompletedformorethan25years. The 1990s witnessed the start of a kind of...

Ortwin Renn Thomas Wehler Peter Wiedemann In late July of 1992 the small and remote mountain resort of Morschach in the Swiss Alps became a lively place of discussion, debate, and discourse. Over a three-day period twenty-two analysts and practitioners of public participation from the United States and Europe came together to address one of the most pressing issues in contemporary environmental politics: How can environmental policies be designed in a way that achieves both effective protection of nature and an adequate representation of public values? In other words, how can we make the...