Epidemiology and social risk amplification

The predominant activity in risk assessment is the modelling of physical hazards. Yet recent major risk events, such as the Sudan 1 food contamination scandal, show how important the social response can be in comparison to physical harm. Withdrawals of product, loss of reputation, reductions in trust, additional testing and inspection regimes, and so on can often be just as consequential as physical injury. Our main basis for understanding the social response to risk events is the Social Amplification of Risk Framework due to Kasperson et al (1988). But this remains a qualitative model, and is accepted even by its authors (for example Kasperson et al 2003) as a 'framework' for organising our general understanding rather than a theory that will predict or explain the social construction of risk in a definite way.Our aim is to determine whether, and investigate how, we can make the concepts which appear in social risk amplification models more precise and more quantitative. To do this we propose to explore a variety of techniques used in the discipline of epidemiology - on the basis of a number of apparent parallels. For example, notions of susceptibility and infection seem to be analogous to notions of sensitivity and concern, 'super-infectives' resemble certain social institutions such as the broadcast media, and the recrudescence of infection resembles the recrudescence of concern and 'ripple effects' found in risk amplification. The programme will involve applying a number of techniques to the various kinds of data we have about social response (for example the uptake of vaccinations), in the context of several recent case studies. We plan to assess how informative these are in the decision processes of our collaborator - the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs.