Reports
The risk landscape of Asian youth
In March 2021, the LRF Institute for the Public Understanding of Risk (IPUR) at the National University of Singapore (NUS) partnered with the NUS Office of Risk Management and Compliance (ORMC) to understand how undergraduate students in Singapore perceive risks.
The undergraduates shared their views on a comprehensive set of 36 risk sources which were classified into three levels:
Personal – “risk to you” | – Experiencing mental health issues – Not having enough money for the things I need, now or in the future – Cyber-bullying |
Societal – “risk to society” | – Rising living costs – Aging society – Crime and violence |
Global – “risk to the world” | – Climate change – Global economic crisis – Infectious disease epidemics/pandemics |
To expand the scope of the project and to gain further insights into the risk perception landscape, the study was also disseminated to undergraduates in target universities in Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam. More than 2,700 undergraduates across the 5 ASEAN countries shared their views via online surveys and focus group discussions.
Below are some of the key findings from the study:
Students were most worried about climate change | Students perceived risks at the global-level to be of greater risk compared to risks at the personal and societal levels, with climate change as the top perceived risk across all 36 risk objects. |
Global challenges were more likely to be dealt with compared to personal challenges | Despite their higher perceived risks, some global risks (e.g., climate change, environmental degradation) were thought to have a better chance of being mitigated compared to many personal risks (e.g., having an illness/accident that impedes normal living or family with physical/psychological difficulties). |
Students expressed concerns about aging and securing affordable housing in Singapore | The challenge of securing affordable housing and Singapore’s aging society were respectively among the top 5 personal-level and societal-level risks unique to undergraduates in Singapore. Both risks were also felt to be less controllable, suggesting that students may feel compelled to cope with these risks rather than attempt to mitigate them. |
Read the full report here.