ABSTRACT
ABSTRACT: This paper concerns people’s sensitivity to probability and the effect of different risk representations during risk communication, in the context of a rarely discussed scenario: WTP for natural disaster risk reduction. Rational human beings are supposed to be sensitive to the magnitude of risk. It is widely observed that in risk communication, for risks with the same magnitude, different formats of the frequency description affect individuals’ risk perception. However, neither of these two assumptions is supported in our CVM experiment. The result is attributed to people’s prior risk belief as well as the nature of the tested scenario. We also find that an opposite effect of the frequently reported ratio bias effect is more likely to occur in natural disaster risk evaluation, especially when the disparity of different formations of risk description enlarges.
