Risk perceptions are beliefs about potential harm or the possibility of a loss. It is a subjective judgment that people make about the characteristics and severity of a risk.
DescriptionThe degree of risk associated with a given behavior is generally considered to represent the likelihood and consequences of harmful effects that result from that behavior. To perceive risk includes evaluations of the probability as well as the consequences of an uncertain outcome. There are three dimensions of perceived risk – perceived likelihood (the probability that one will be harmed by the hazard), perceived susceptibility (an individual’s constitutional vulnerability to a hazard), and perceived severity (the extent of harm a hazard would cause). Risk perceptions are central to many health behavior theories. For example, models that have been developed specifically to predict health behavior such as the health belief model (Rosenstock, 1966),...
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Public Health & Primary Care, Trinity College, The University of Dublin, College Green, Dublin, D2, Ireland
Dr. Catherine Darker
Correspondence to Catherine Darker .
Editor information Editors and AffiliationsBehavioral Medicine Research Center, Department of Psychology, University of Miami, Miami, FL, USA
Marc D. Gellman
Cardiovascular Safety, Quintiles, Durham, NC, USA
J. Rick Turner
© 2013 Springer Science+Business Media, New York
About this entry Cite this entryDarker, C. (2013). Risk Perception. In: Gellman, M.D., Turner, J.R. (eds) Encyclopedia of Behavioral Medicine. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-1005-9_866
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