The influence of culture on Koreans’ risk perception

Abstract

Since the candlelight protest against US beef imports in 2008, Korea has been considered to have entered the risk society. However, little is known about Koreans’ risk perception, much less about how the cultural characteristics influence the risk perception of Koreans. The purpose of the study was to find out the Koreans’ risk structure and to examine the influence of culture on risk perception. Exploratory factor analysis revealed seven risk factors including crimes, economic risks, uncontrollable risks, accidents, environmental risks, natural disasters, and future risks. The mean scores of each risk factors showed that Koreans were more concerned of environmental risks, crimes, and economic risks. Hierarchical regression analyses followed, employing both etic and emic cultural variables. Results found that the emic cultural variables significantly increased the explained variance for ‘social risks’ (crimes, economic risks, uncontrollable risks, and environmental risks). Findings suggested that the unique cultural characteristics of Koreans were closely related to the perception of social risks, that is, the kind of risks that were caused and considered to be managed on a societal level. The study contributes to the understanding of Koreans’ risk perception from cultural perspective. Limitation and future research direction is discussed.

Keywords:

• culture
• risk perception
• emic
• etic
• Korean