An empirical analysis of communication flow, strategy and stakeholders' participation in the risk communication literature 1988-2000

Risk communication during the years has shown its vitality and has proved its importance as a field of research. This article provides a brief record of the development of risk communication in the environmental and technological domain by examining some of the trends resulting from the analysis of the theoretical and empirical literature in the field, as it is available through scientific journals. In total, 349 peer-reviewed articles published between 1988 and 2000 and listed in the ISI Web of Science databases were analyzed. The theoretical perspective that we use is that of control mutuality, which emphasizes the interaction between the parties in the risk decision-making process and their mutual influence, rather than simply unidirectional control of one stakeholder over the other. It echoes the democratic perspective, but also considers the rationality of the technical standpoint. The results indicate that over the whole period there is an increase in published articles on risk communication. As expected, we found a gradual decrease in the articles referring to a one-way flow of risk communication and an increase of those concerned with two-way communication. We also observed a gradual increase in the articles referring to stakeholder participation in risk decisions in the last period. No differences were found with respect to risk communication strategy.