Proactive Response to Citizen Risk Concerns: Increasing Citizens' Knowledge of Emergency Response Practices

Abstract

A research project was conducted to further test the approach to risk communication, which assumes that the information provided by the chemical industry to the members of surrounding communities needs to be that which members of those communities believe will give them more control over the risks they encounter due to the manufacturing and transportation operations occurring there. This study discovered that communities that engage in more extensive efforts to create emergency response systems and inform residents of those measures increase the risk tolerance of community members. Three cities in which extensive chemical manufacturing and transportation operations occur were used to generate comparative data to estimate the effectiveness of communication efforts and to determine whether zones of meaning and networks of influence are being established. The conclusion of this research is that when community officials provide emergency response systems and the information citizens need to protect themselves in the event of an emergency, those efforts can be demonstrated to foster support for the industry.