Toward a generalizable measure of wildlife disease risk perceptions

While the study of risk perceptions is central to the human dimensions of natural resources literature, psychometric measurement of the concept is variable. There lacks a generalizable measure that allows for comparisons across constituencies, times, and hazards. Our research fills this gap by contrasting the usefulness of a multidimensional measure that includes severity, probability, and affective components to a single-item measure commonly used to measure risk perceptions in the context of chronic wasting disease (CWD). Data were obtained from surveys of 1,278 hunters in Georgia, USA. Based on our results, we suggested that the severity and affective dimensions are strongly representative of an individual’s general risk perceptions. We then demonstrate that the multidimensional risk perception measure outperforms the single-item measure. We suggested that human dimensions researchers adopt a multidimensional measure of risk perception that allows for cross-sample comparison and improves our understanding of wildlife-associated disease risk perceptions among diverse constituencies.