SRA-E Lisbon 2017

Governmental agencies have limited resources to monitor and control risks related to food and everyday items. This study examined how laypeople (N = 92) and experts (N = 14) prioritized 28 hazards related to food and everyday items. Participants received detailed descriptions of the hazards, enabling them to make deliberative decisions. They prioritized the hazards before and after a group discussion (approximately 15 persons per group), in which the average prioritization of the group was discussed. The rankings of the hazards before and after the group discussion were highly correlated. However, a comparison showed significant differences in the rankings by laypeople and experts, particularly in 18 out of the 28 hazards. Laypeople prioritized the risks of pesticides and genetically modified (GM) foods and GM animal feed as higher than experts did. Experts gave higher rankings to the risks of bacterial contamination, banned substances in tattoo ink, allergens in food, and sensitizing substances in cosmetics compared with laypeople’s ratings. In order to test the influence of the deliberative method (e.g., providing detailed information about each hazard) data from a second group of lay people were collected by the means of a survey (N=118). This group did not receive specific information about the risks. The risk rankings of the laypeople group with information was highly correlated with risk ranking of laypeople without receiving information. Overall the results of the study suggest that deliberative methods of risk ranking or survey methods provide similar results among laypeople. There are, however, substantial differences between experts and laypeople. The results suggest that experts may have been less influenced by heuristics compared with laypeople because the former may have relied more on the severity of the outcome and the probability of a hazard.