NEWS
What is the biggest risk in your life?
World Risk Poll show insights into largest risk concerns across 140 countries
If someone were to come up to you and ask, “What is the single, biggest worry in your life?” What would your response be? Finances? The environment? Or perhaps your health? This question was the crux of a first-ever global study to understand attitudes about the most pressing risks faced and feared by individuals in their daily lives.
Gallup, the global analytics and advice firm, was commissioned by Lloyd’s Register Foundation (LRF) to carry out the “World Risk Poll” to gain insights into some of the largest risk concerns for people across more than 140 countries. In an interview with Andrew Rzepa, who leads Gallup’s government and NGO consulting, one key element brought to attention was that the World Risk Poll aims to ultimately create conversations, whether with policy makers or other organisations by sharing some of the biggest risk concerns and creating interventions for a safer world.
People’s perception of risk will translate into behaviour. An over or under perception of risk has huge ripple effects on how resources are allocated, and what sort of safety measures and policies are implemented. In the months following reports of panic buying behaviour in Singapore, it was reported that 250,000 eggs were thrown away due to oversupply. We need only look at COVID-19 and the impact on people’s risk perceptions and behaviour to understand why risk perception studies are so critical.
Through the World Risk Poll, interviews were carried out with people across 140 countries to determine whether different countries had similar or different perceptions or risk. One of the key findings, according to Andrew, was that people from high income countries were worried about financial risk. The importance of mental health was a common concern shared by almost all interviewees throughout the world.
Other interesting findings had a more cultural influence such as individuals in Nepal fearing ghosts and as a result have trouble integrating into society at night. Some may wonder what good it is to know about some people’s fear of ghosts but these concerns have knock-on effects such as anxiety and well-being. Having such micro data can be beneficial when trying to tackle social or economic issues.
The LRF Institute for the Public Understanding of Risk (IPUR) is working with Gallup to analyse this global data set to develop insights and interventions aimed at improving the public understanding of risk. The Gallup World Risk Poll report detailing these findings will be launched in late 2020 and two chapters will be authored by IPUR. Data from the World Risk Poll will also be made public in the future to bring to focus some of the key risk concerns from people around the world so that not only can policies and measures be properly formulated, but also people can make more informed choices in their everyday lives through these initiatives.
IPUR will also be making a grant call to invite researchers to work with the Institute on data from World Risk Poll and the Gallup World Poll. The two collaboration initiatives are established under the Memorandum of Understanding signed between IPUR and Gallup in 2019 to generate new research and development activities around the perception, measurement and communication of risk globally. Stay tuned for more details on the grant call.
The interview with Andre Rzepa was the first in a series of podcasts by LRF. For the full interview with Andrew,
