For your personal enjoyment, I’m going to be writing a series of threads and tweets on risk perception, the social construction of risk, risk aversion and COVID-19.

One advantage of being an interdisciplinary scholar is that I can explore and borrow theoretical constructs from across various disciplines.

I study the governance of bottled water. We consume BW, among other reasons, as a mechanism to govern, control and reduce risk.

Face masks are also a mechanism for risk mitigation and transmission probability reduction. Though there was some disagreement on whether we should use masks. Particularly in the face of personal protective equipment (PPE) shortages, scientific consensus worldwide now supports it

We continuously evaluate others’ risk management strategies vis-à-vis our own. This evaluation is relational because we assess how much risk do others take and how much we are willing to engage with people and their own risk self-assessments in the face of enormous uncertainty.

In other words, we get to decide how much risk we are willing to expose ourselves to when interacting with other people. This calculus is very important right now as we evaluate whether we should go out for groceries, order in, etc.

I mention these relational risk management

... strategies because I have been watching, observing and analyzing how taco and juice stands, corner stores and supermarkets are signaling that they are following hygienic protocols. Three clear signals include:

- food preparers/deliverers use PPE (mask, gloves, etc.)

- restaurant layout now shows increased distance across tables
- clear messaging supporting hand washing and other hygienic measures around the food/market establishment

We process cues visually. The message these taco stands, juice vendors, small restaurants/stores are ...

... sending is “you can trust us to buy your food here/deliver your groceries to your door/etc.”

In visibly communicating THEIR risk management/reduction strategy, they’re hoping to persuade you that their standards meet YOUR own risk mitigation strategy.

This is an adaptive

... strategy. Micro-entrepreneurs are adapting to rapidly changing environments by showcasing their adaptive capacity.

These thoughts may sound obvious to some people, but the underlying complexity of their decision making processes is fascinating.

Because not everyone ...

... wants to adapt to current conditions of uncertain and turmoil.

But if you want to stay in business, you HAVE TO. You need to rapidly find your customer base’s risk tolerance and build a strategy to meet their (unwritten/untold/intrinsic/invisible) demands.

You can also look at this phenomenon through the lenses of complex adaptive systems theory, or evolutionary economic geography.

That’s why it’s important to read broadly, deeply and across disciplines and fields. You get better insight into human behaviour.

I has a chance to swing by my office for like 10 minutes to pick up a few books, so I got these (this is just a tiny fraction of my personal library on the social dimensions of risk).

I plan to use some of this work to expand on this thread and write a blog post too :)