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The sociology of hazardous waste, risk, and disastersis a relatively new discipline with anincreasing volume of empirical research by scholars. Francis O. Adeola focuses this bookon hazardous ...and toxic wastes releases, industrial toxic disasters, contamination of communities and the environment, and the subsequent adverse health effects among exposed populations.He explains the emerging sociological study of risk, natural, and technological disasters, and he reviews the accumulated body of knowledge in the field up-to-date. This groundbreaking work integrates sociological perspectives with perspectives from other disciplines in the discussion of the problems posed by technological hazards both in advanced industrialized societies and in underdeveloped world.
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The sociology of hazardous waste, risk, and disasters is a relatively new discipline with an increasing volume of empirical research by scholars. Francis O. Adeola focuses this book on hazardous and toxic wastes releases, industrial toxic disasters, contamination of communities and the environment, and the subsequent adverse health effects among exposed populations. He explains the emerging sociological study of risk, natural, and technological disasters, and he reviews the accumulated body of knowledge in the field up-to-date. This groundbreaking work integrates sociological perspectives with perspectives from other disciplines in the discussion of the problems posed by technological hazards both in advanced industrialized societies and in underdeveloped world.
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PART I: HAZARDOUS WASTES, DISASTERS AND HEALTH RISKS Sociology of Hazardous Wastes, Disasters, and Risk Hazardous and Toxic Wastes as Social Problems Taxonomy of Hazardous Wastes PART II: ELECTRONIC WASTES, PERSISTENT ORGANIC POLLUTANTS, AND HEALTH EFFECTS Electronic Waste: The Dark Side of High-Tech Revolution Environmental Health Risks of Persistent Organic Compounds PART III: CONTAMINATED COMMUNITIES AND REGULATORY RESPONSES Communities Contaminated by Toxic Wastes and Industrial Disasters: Selected Cases The Regulatory Frameworks PART IV: CONCLUSION Critical Environmental Justice Movement
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Francis Adeola is a professor of Sociology at University of New Orleans.
Cultural theory (CT) developed from grid/group analysis, which posits that different patterns of social relations—hierarchist, individualist, egalitarian, and fatalist—produce compatible cultural ...biases influencing assessment of which hazards pose high or low risk and how to manage them. Introduced to risk analysis (RA) in 1982 by Douglas and Wildavsky's Risk and Culture, this institutional approach to social construction of risk surprised a field hitherto focused on psychological influences on risk perceptions and behavior. We explain what CT is and how it developed; describe and evaluate its contributions to the study of risk perception and management, and its prescriptions for risk assessment and management; and identify opportunities and resources to develop its contributions to RA. We suggest how the diverse, fruitful, but scattered efforts to develop CT both inside and outside the formal discipline of RA (as exemplified by the Society for Risk Analysis) might be leveraged for greater theoretical, methodological, and applied progress in the field.
Are Risk Preferences Stable? Schildberg-Hörisch, Hannah
The Journal of economic perspectives,
04/2018, Letnik:
32, Številka:
2
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
It is ultimately an empirical question whether risk preferences are stable over time. The evidence comes from diverse strands of literature, covering the stability of risk preferences in panel data ...over shorter periods of time, life-cycle dynamics in risk preferences, the possibly long-lasting effects of exogenous shocks on risk preferences as well as temporary variations in risk preferences. Individual risk preferences appear to be persistent and moderately stable over time, but their degree of stability is too low to be reconciled with the assumption of perfect stability in neoclassical economic theory. We offer an alternative conceptual framework for preference stability that builds on research regarding the stability of personality traits in psychology. The definition of stability used in psychology implies high levels of rank-order stability across individuals and not that the individual will maintain the same level of a trait over time. Preference parameters are considered as distributions with a mean that is significantly but less than perfectly stable, plus some systematic variance. This framework accommodates evidence on systematic changes in risk preferences over the life cycle, due to exogenous shocks such as economic crises or natural catastrophes, and due to temporary changes in self-control resources, emotions, or stress. We note that research on the stability of (risk) preferences is conceptually at the heart of microeconomics and systematic changes in risk preferences have vital real-world consequences.
Freaks of Fortune Levy, Jonathan
2012, 2014., 2012-10-29, 20120101
eBook
Until the nineteenth century, "risk" was a specialized term: it was the commodity exchanged in a marine insurance contract. Freaks of Fortune tells how the modern concept of risk emerged in the ...United States. Born on the high seas, risk migrated inland and became essential to the financial management of an inherently uncertain capitalist future.
In recent years, there has been a gradual increase in research literature on the challenges of interconnected, compound, interacting, and cascading risks. These concepts are becoming ever more ...central to the resilience debate. They aggregate elements of climate change adaptation, critical infrastructure protection, and societal resilience in the face of complex, high‐impact events. However, despite the potential of these concepts to link together diverse disciplines, scholars and practitioners need to avoid treating them in a superficial or ambiguous manner. Overlapping uses and definitions could generate confusion and lead to the duplication of research effort. This article gives an overview of the state of the art regarding compound, interconnected, interacting, and cascading risks. It is intended to help build a coherent basis for the implementation of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (SFDRR). The main objective is to propose a holistic framework that highlights the complementarities of the four kinds of complex risk in a manner that is designed to support the work of researchers and policymakers. This article suggests how compound, interconnected, interacting, and cascading risks could be used, with little or no redundancy, as inputs to new analyses and decisional tools designed to support the implementation of the SFDRR. The findings can be used to improve policy recommendations and support tools for emergency and crisis management, such as scenario building and impact trees, thus contributing to the achievement of a system‐wide approach to resilience.
While flooding is the costliest natural disaster risk, public‐sector investments provide incomplete protection. Moreover, individuals are in general reluctant to voluntarily invest in measures which ...limit damage costs from natural disasters. The moral hazard hypothesis argues that insured individuals take fewer other preparedness measures based on their assumption that their losses will be covered anyway. Conversely, the advantageous selection hypothesis argues that individuals view insurance and other risk reduction measures as complements. This study offers a comprehensive assessment of factors related to the separate uptake of natural disaster insurance and the flood‐proofing of homes as well as why people may take both of these measures together. We use data from a survey conducted in Paris, France, in 2018, after several flood events, for a representative sample of 2976 residents facing different levels of flood risk. We perform both main effects regressions and interaction analyses to reveal that home adaptation to flooding is positively associated with comprehensive insurance coverage, which includes financial protection against natural disasters. Furthermore, actual and perceived risks, as well as awareness of official information on flood risk, are found to explain some of the relationship between home adaptation and comprehensive insurance purchase. We suggest several recommendations to policymakers based on these insights which aim to address insurance coverage gaps and the failure to take disaster risk reduction measures. In particular, groups in socially vulnerable situations may benefit from subsidized insurance, low interest loans, and decision aids to implement costly adaptation measures.
Risk aversion—but also the higher-order risk preferences of prudence and temperance—are fundamental concepts in the study of economic decision making. We propose a method to jointly measure the ...intensity of risk aversion, prudence, and temperance. Our theoretical approach is to define risk compensations of different orders, and in an experiment we elicit these compensations with a price list technique. We find evidence for risk aversion, prudence, and temperance. These traits correlate within subjects. The compensations elicited for prudence are significantly larger than those for risk aversion and temperance. In contrast to commonly used utility functions, prospect theory can predict this behavioral pattern. In our experiment, risk-averse, risk-loving, and risk-neutral subjects are prudent. This supports a recent theoretical observation that prudence may be a more universal trait than previously realized.
• We change the definition of financial distress in CoVaR. • We consider more severe distress events, backtest CoVaR, and improve its consistency. • Our CoVaR and VaR have a weak relation in the ...cross-section and in the time-series. • Depository institutions contribute the most to systemic risk. • Leverage, size, and equity beta are important in explaining systemic risk.
We modify Adrian and Brunnermeier’s (2011) CoVaR, the VaR of the financial system conditional on an institution being in financial distress. We change the definition of financial distress from an institution being exactly at its VaR to being at most at its VaR. This change allows us to consider more severe distress events, to backtest CoVaR, and to improve its consistency (monotonicity) with respect to the dependence parameter. We define the systemic risk contribution of an institution as the change from its CoVaR in its benchmark state (defined as a one-standard deviation event) to its CoVaR under financial distress. We estimate the systemic risk contributions of four financial industry groups consisting of a large number of institutions for the sample period June 2000 to February 2008 and the 12months prior to the beginning of the crisis. We also investigate the link between institutions’ contributions to systemic risk and their characteristics.
Summary Background Quantification of the disease burden caused by different risks informs prevention by providing an account of health loss different to that provided by a disease-by-disease ...analysis. No complete revision of global disease burden caused by risk factors has been done since a comparative risk assessment in 2000, and no previous analysis has assessed changes in burden attributable to risk factors over time. Methods We estimated deaths and disability-adjusted life years (DALYs; sum of years lived with disability YLD and years of life lost YLL) attributable to the independent effects of 67 risk factors and clusters of risk factors for 21 regions in 1990 and 2010. We estimated exposure distributions for each year, region, sex, and age group, and relative risks per unit of exposure by systematically reviewing and synthesising published and unpublished data. We used these estimates, together with estimates of cause-specific deaths and DALYs from the Global Burden of Disease Study 2010, to calculate the burden attributable to each risk factor exposure compared with the theoretical-minimum-risk exposure. We incorporated uncertainty in disease burden, relative risks, and exposures into our estimates of attributable burden. Findings In 2010, the three leading risk factors for global disease burden were high blood pressure (7·0% 95% uncertainty interval 6·2–7·7 of global DALYs), tobacco smoking including second-hand smoke (6·3% 5·5–7·0), and household air pollution from solid fuels (4·3% 3·4–5·3). In 1990, the leading risks were childhood underweight (7·9% 6·8–9·4), household air pollution from solid fuels (HAP; 6·8% 5·5–8·0), and tobacco smoking including second-hand smoke (6·1% 5·4–6·8). Dietary risk factors and physical inactivity collectively accounted for 10·0% (95% UI 9·2–10·8) of global DALYs in 2010, with the most prominent dietary risks being diets low in fruits and those high in sodium. Several risks that primarily affect childhood communicable diseases, including unimproved water and sanitation and childhood micronutrient deficiencies, fell in rank between 1990 and 2010, with unimproved water and sanitation accounting for 0·9% (0·4–1·6) of global DALYs in 2010. However, in most of sub-Saharan Africa childhood underweight, HAP, and non-exclusive and discontinued breastfeeding were the leading risks in 2010, while HAP was the leading risk in south Asia. The leading risk factor in Eastern Europe, Andean Latin America, and southern sub-Saharan Africa in 2010 was alcohol use; in most of Asia, most of Latin America, North Africa and Middle East, and central Europe it was high blood pressure. Despite declines, tobacco smoking including second-hand smoke remained the leading risk in high-income north America and western Europe. High body-mass index has increased globally and it is the leading risk in Australasia and southern Latin America, and also ranks high in other high-income regions, North Africa and Middle East, and Oceania. Interpretation Worldwide, the contribution of different risk factors to disease burden has changed substantially, with a shift away from risks for communicable diseases in children towards those for non-communicable diseases in adults. These changes are related to the ageing population, decreased mortality among children younger than 5 years, changes in cause-of-death composition, and changes in risk factor exposures. New evidence has led to changes in the magnitude of key risks including unimproved water and sanitation, vitamin A and zinc deficiencies, and ambient particulate matter pollution. The extent to which the epidemiological shift has occurred and what the leading risks currently are varies greatly across regions. In much of sub-Saharan Africa, the leading risks are still those associated with poverty and those that affect children. Funding Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
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