Risk perceptions of Indonesian students vs. US and Hong Kong students

A psychometric paradigm has been widely used for studying perceived risk. This strategy uses psychophysical scaling and multivariate analysis techniques that provide quantitative representations of risk perception. In these techniques, people make judgements on the currents and desired riskiness of diverse hazards and the desired level of regulation of each hazards. These judgements are then related to several characteristics that have been shown to account for their perceptions, including both qualitative aspects (e.g. voluntariness, dread, knowledge) and quantitative ones (e.g. the number of deaths). The objective of the present survey was to study the risk perceptions among Indonesians, and to compare them with results of previous studies of the USA and Hong Kong, places with very different socioeconomic and cultural characteristics. 3 refs, 1 fig., 1 tab