Chapter 6: Risks and Hazards

Test question bank

1.  Risk is defined as

  1. a product, process, or condition that potentially threatens people and their reproduction.
  2. the estimated likelihood that a decision or action will have a negative consequence.
  3. the degree to which probabilities cannot be assessed.

2.  The key elements of risk include all of the following except

  1. decision.
  2. natural hazards.
  3. anticipation.

3.  The degree to which the outcomes of a situation is unknown is called

  1. risk.
  2. uncertainty.
  3. vulnerability.

4.  Which of the following risk perception biases is likely to lead to an underestimation of risk?

  1. unobservable
  2. voluntary
  3. immediate effects

5.  Douglas, Wildavsky, and other cultural theorists suggest that our sense of hazards, risk, and uncertainty is

  1. learned through socialization and culture.
  2. hard-wired through evolution.
  3. irrational because it is based on affect.

6.  In cultural theory, egalitarians are likely to use ______as a risk approach.

  1. the rule of experts
  2. trial-and-error
  3. the precautionary principle

7.  Environmental justice movements attempt to correct systemic inequalities that

  1. limit people’s ability to make informed decisions.
  2. lead to environmental degradation in poor neighborhoods.
  3. all of the above.

True/False

8.  Gilbert F. White argued that engineering technologies such as levees were the solution to flooding problems.

  1. true b. false

9.  Natural hazards are those in which there is no human presence or impact.

a.  true b. false

10.  Cultural theory argues that perception of risk is based on how we interact with others, rather than universal human traits or individual biases.

  1. true b. false

Identification

People: Mary Douglas, Gilbert White

Keywords: affect, cultural theory, externality, hazard, risk, risk perception, uncertainty

Concepts: natural hazard vs. anthropogenic hazard; tech fix; perception biases (choice, control, observability, latency, potential for catastrophe); political economy of hazards (control of decisions, constraints on decisions, control of information)

Essay

·  Select one of the four cultural categories from cultural theory and briefly describe its characteristics. Using the example of river flooding, explain how being in that category might influence a person’s perception of flood risk and their approach to dealing with floods.

·  In more developed countries, those who tend to be most at risk to flood and landslide hazards tend to be wealthier people. In contrast, more marginalized than wealthy people face those same risks in less developed countries. Use a political economy perspective to explain the differences in exposure to flood and landslide hazards as they vary by household- and country-level income.