Descriptive models of perceived risk

Abstract

Risk plays a central role in decision making. Accordingly, risk has been a popular research topic for more than four decades. Finding a generic definition of risk is hard, since this term is used in many areas such as economics, political science, management science, and medical research. However, one thing in common is that risk is always related to both the negative outcomes and uncertainty. In addition, we know that risk is normally subjective and constructed by a human’s perception process. But indeed how do people perceive risks? Is there any model capable of describing this procedure and predicting people’s perceived risk? In this article, we focus on empirical studies of perceived risk.