Standing in the shoes of hazard managers: An experiment on avalanche risk perception

In this paper, we report on a recent experiment from Switzerland that asked people about their perception of avalanche risk to roads, and in particular on their weighting of accident frequencies vs. the associated number of fatalities. We therefore conducted a choice experiment-a method, which has recently gathered the attention of researchers in the field of mortality risk (Alberini et al. 2007; Itaoka et al. 2006; Tsuge et al. 2005)—putting laypeople into the shoes of natural hazard managers.