Perception of delayed environmental risks: beyond time discounting

Purpose – The purpose of this research is to explore the effect of time delay on the perception of environmental risks beyond time discounting, and thus provide a reference for effective communication related to environment and environmental risks. Design/methodology/approach – Ten risk scenarios across four time delay conditions were designed. Computer program randomly presented different risk scenarios to student subjects. Risk perception was measured through equivalent certain loss elicited by bi-section method. In all, 50 students from Harbin Institute of Technology Shenzhen Graduate School participated in the experiment. Findings – Time delay makes the subjects optimistic toward environmental risk with the exclusion of time discounting. The more distant in time the occurrence of an environmental risk, the less in intensity subjects will perceive it as a severe threat. Also, there is a noticeable difference in environmental risk perception between males and females. Research limitations/implications – This tentative research focusses on exploring the existence of time delay effect on environmental risk perception. Only student subjects are recruited for this research. Future studies are needed to extend the population to people of different backgrounds in order to generalize the finding. Practical implications – Current ethical appeal of zero social discount rate is unlikely to be effective. Time delay effect in people's environmental risk perception should be acknowledged. Such an acknowledgement is the basis of trust in risk communication. Communication effort needs to address this time delay effect to make people alert to long-term environmental risks, and eventually change their environmental behaviors. Originality/value – The explorative research represents the first attempt to investigate the effect of time delay on environmental risk perception when time discounting is excluded. It suggests a new direction to understand public optimism toward delayed environmental risks, and reluctance to take proactive actions, and thus offers a new insight into related communication efforts.