Risk Perception Health and Safety : An introduction

What is risk perception in health and safety?

Risk perception is the ability of an individual to discern a certain amount of risk, and risk tolerance refers to a person's capacity to accept a certain amount of risk. These two concepts, while unique, are very much linked.

Risk perception is defined as people's judgments and assessment of hazards that might pose immediate or long-term threats to their health and well-being.

Risk perception refers to people's subjective judgments about the likelihood of negative occurrences such as injury, illness, disease, and death. Risk perception is important in health and risk communication because it determines which hazards people care about and how they deal with them.

What is the difference between risk perception and risk assessment?

Difference between risk assessment & risk perception? Risk perception is based on personal factors and experience, whereas risk assessment is factual & data-based.

What is the role of risk perception in risk management?

These risk perceptions play a critical role in how individuals choose to mitigate the risk.

For example, if an individual estimates the risk from a hazard to be low, they are less likely to act to reduce their exposure to this hazard (McCaffrey, 2004).

How do you assess risk perception?

Some researchers have measured perceived risk by asking the participants to estimate how others evaluate a hazard, or how much others would worry about the participant if s/he were exposed to the hazard (e.g. Fuchs et al., 2013; Fuchs & Reichel, 2006).

Perception of Risk / Perception of Hazard

Perception (process of analyse(sense) of danger/risk ) – the way a person interprets information detected by their senses. (E.g. Human sensory receptors ( eye, nose, tongue, skin, ear ) And worker’s got sensory defects.

Risk perception: 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.

Perceptual expectancy, which allows people to recognise hazards or risks;

Perceptual distortion which can be distorted by other factors like illness, stress, fatigue, etc.

Factors that can affect perception of hazards and risk include:

Illness.
Stress. (e.g. more work load)
Fatigue. (e.g. more working hours)
Drugs and alcohol.( under influence)
Previous experiences.
Training
education. (Certification )
Age ( e.g. Young Worker )

How can risk perception be improved?

When anticipating what will happen, try to reduce the pessimism.

This approach affects the feelings of fear and causes you to assess the risk higher than it is.

Because of our need to control we often perceive we have more control over situation that we actually do.

How can workers’ hazard perception be improved?

First Understand why hazards are not noticed by talking to workers:

Awareness campaigns
Highlight hazards, e.g. signs.
Ensure adequate lighting is available.
Reduce distractions, e.g. noise. vibration
Avoid excessive fatigue.
Stress. (e.g. Reduce the work load)
Enhancing experiences.
By providing training and education.

Risk Perception importance

Practice the scenario : Risk Perception/ Hazard Perception-

A train driver has passed a stop signal resulting in a collision with another train. Investigation of the incident concluded that the driver had seen the overhead signal but had not perceived the overhead signal correctly. There had been a number of previous similar incidents at the signal. Although the driver was not aware of this. The driver concerned was inexperienced and had not received information and training associated with that route. The signal was difficult to see being partly obscured by a bridge and affected by strong sunlight.

In addition, the arrangement of the lights on the signal was a non-typical formation. The driver had approached the signal with no expectation from previous signals that it would be on ‘stop’

(a) Give practical reasons why the driver may not have perceived the signal correctly.

(b) What are the steps that could be taken to help reduce the Likelihood of a recurrence of this incident.

Possible Human factors from the above scenario:

(a) Low risk perception,

Lack of training,
Negative Attitude,
Negative Aptitude,
Lack of information,
Unaware Factors,
Environment Factors-sunlight , non-typical formation,
Lack of experience,
Lack of knowledge,

(b) Steps:

Awareness of previous accidents,
Training,
Information,
Risk Assessment,
On Job training ,
Enrich Job experience,
Co-pilot ,
modification of signal,
relocation of the signal,
typical formation,
more experienced driver required.
modify the signal with hood,
Anti-collision arrangement ,
Flagman on this signal ,
special signages before the signal

Learning outcome:

What three key factors influence a worker’s behaviour? Give examples of each.
What is “competence”?
How can an organisation inadvertently motivate people to behave unsafely?
What are reasons why two people may perceive hazards differently ?
Many accidents can be attributed to some kind of human action. How human behaviour influenced by Organization?