Risk cultures and dominant approaches towards disasters in seven European countries

Abstract

This paper builds upon the risk culture concept started with Mary Douglas’ and Aaron Wildavsky’s seminal work on risk and culture. Based upon the empirical results of a qualitative sociological study on sociocultural factors affecting risk perception and crisis communication in seven European countries, a theoretical model, illustrating how differences in disasters framing imply diverse approaches to risk and disaster management, is suggested. According to this framework, culturally bounded assumptions and conventions strongly influence how communities make sense of risks and hazards and how these communities consider some ways of dealing with disasters more appropriate than others. The framework suggested in this article distinguishes between risk cultures of a given society, which do not necessarily respond to nation states. In order to explain differences in how cultures deal with risks and disasters, and to define the main features of our typology, three main interrelated dimensions have been selected: disaster framing, trust in authorities and blaming. By analyzing differences and similarities in how people perceive and interpret disasters, as well as to whom the responsibility for risk prevention and crisis management is attributed, in seven European countries, three specific ideal types of risk cultures emerged: state-oriented risk culture, individual-oriented risk culture and fatalistic risk culture. Implications for crisis management and communication in case of a disaster will be addressed for each of these risk cultures.

Keywords:

• risk cultures
• risk perception
• disaster management
• risk communication
• crisis communication
• cultural theory

Acknowledgements

This work is based on results from work package 2 (sociocultural factors of risk perception and crisis communication) of the EU-funded project ‘Opti-Alert: Enhancing the efficiency of alerting systems through personalized, culturally sensitive multi-channel communication' [SECURITY-2010-261699].

Notes

1. Quotations from interviews and focus group discussions will be kept anonymous. Only the source of data (expert interview, survivor interview or focus group discussion) and information about the location (country, at-risk area, rural area, etc.) will be mentioned.

2. Loi n. 2004-811 du 13 août 2004 de modernisation de la sécurité civile.